


Off the Handle

by pressforward



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, M/M, Parkour, alternearth au, butt-touch, davekat - Freeform, freerunning, parkourstuck, quadrant-flipping, tricking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-06 14:21:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressforward/pseuds/pressforward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate names – ‘this human emotion called ‘butt-touch,’’ ‘but who tops,’ ‘parkourstuck’</p><p>Steps<br/>1. Be Dave Strider, human, tricker extraordinaire and minor GrubTube sensation. Meet some douchebag at a practice session.<br/>2. Be Karkat Vantas, troll, traceur with a few tricks and an ornery fucker with something to hide.<br/>3. Step into the trick, keep your core tight, and flip.<br/>4. Keep flipping.<br/>5. Now kiss.</p><p>Tips<br/>-Drink plenty of water.<br/>-Don’t slow down as you’re approaching the obstacle! That’s stutter-stepping, and you will fuck up hard.<br/>-Knees up, shoulders back.<br/>-Quit worrying already and touch his hot butt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gotta Back It Up

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt pulled from this pairing meme: http://roachpatrol.tumblr.com/post/17141892303/pairing-meme

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, and you are pretty certain that you’re supposed to be calling the culling drones right now. You have just come across a CERTAIN ORNERY MUTANTBLOOD with SKINNED KNEES, and he is trying to hide farther back in the SKETCHY ALLEYWAY you found him in and also CUSSING YOU OUT. You’d like to tell him to CALM THE FUCK DOWN, but he is hearing none of it, and also that awful, tinny song from the commercials on the holoscreens is grinding through your ears. It’s basically the same six notes in the same shitty pattern, on repeat, and Bro had you mixing better by the time you started the first round of schoolfeeding. You don’t know what’s worse: the absolute banality, or the way the tune got ripped straight from that Jesus song, the one that would probably hit the heights of fthluthonic horror when sung by a chorus of children in a low-budget paranormal flick.

‘1-800-413/-CULL the mutants/save our genes.’

Actually, the worst is definitely how ‘genes’ and ‘three’ don’t really rhyme. They hadn’t even been trying, but that’s not the point right now. 

More importantly, this self-important little fuckass is trying to bluster you into turning the other way and never, ever telling anyone about this, EVER, and not doing a very good job of it. He’s running through the entire catalogue: threats, promises, insults, pleas, and back to steadily more gruesome (but inventive, you’ll give him that) threats. It’s a clearance sale in the coercion department, all these bargain bins and ‘Must Go!’ racks lined up before you, just begging for you to dip into one or two or six, and oh fuck, he actually is begging now, okay, shit, that was not a good thing that happened with your lungs and stomach right there. This kid doesn’t beg, and oh thank god, he’s insulting your mother or something, good, but that crackle of desperation is still at the back of his throat and you shove your hands in your pockets. Three insults in is when that crackle splits his current word right down the middle, and now he’s yelling at you.

“JUST GO THE FUCK AWAY, YOU PUSTULANT SACK OF SHIT, GO THE FUCK AWAY OR CALL THE FUCKING NUMBER IF YOUR BLEACH-CORRODED PAN CAN MUSTER UP THE INTELLECTUAL FORTITUDE TO NOT SHIT ITSELF AND DO SOMETHING PROPERLY FOR ONCE IN ITS FUCKING LIFE-“

And wow, you are seriously not cool with this, not cool with this at all, and that shitty jingle won’t stop shitty running through your shitty head, and every plunked, predictable note is wailing for you to whip out your phone, dial the number, and report this panicky little bastard. He can’t even decide whether to abscond like fuck or take a swing at you; not like he could lose you, and not like you’d lose to him, either way.

But fuck that shit. You weren’t gonna call the drones anyway. And if you’re being honest with yourself, you never were.

==>REWIND

Okay, your name is Dave Strider, and you are backing the fuck up, all the way back to how this shit started. It is four months ago, 4:25 PM. You are twenty, have a day off, and so are sitting on the couch eating breakfast as your Bro heads out to work. His weird puppet shit is still everywhere, but whatever, he’s been doing that for as long as you can remember. Besides, his job is all top-secrets and robots on the military base a few stops down; dude needs a hobby. You don’t judge.

Most other nights, you’d be heading out with him, running on the troll-times that keep the base ticking. Or maybe it’d be you going solo on one of his nights off, but that almost never happens. Big top-secret robot shit is too important for breaks. You work on the same base - he got you your job -, but your gig’s a little more casual, a little easier to get downtime on, and you’re the fucking best at it, hands down. You’re a courier par excellence, as is only to be expected of the freerunning godking of the New Troll-Houston skyline. Nothing fancy about it; it’s just the easiest way to get around in this toybox mess of a city.

Except for the flips. The flips are for you, because parkour is fine and all, but it’s just a little too clean for a guy as hellaciously cool as you. Also, the tricks look way better on camera.

You finish breakfast and put your dishes in the sink, head back to your room to finish editing the video from last week. It’s almost done, just needs a few color tweaks here and there, and the sound definitely needs work. For a starting point, the track’s fine, but it doesn’t rise where you want it to, has no suspense at key points, and the sync is just slightly off. You put your headphones on and plug in your synthesizer. The camera gets pushed from its spot next to the keyboard to the other side of the table, teetering until you realize what an absolutely terrible idea that is. You move it to your bed before settling in front of your husktop and opening the video folder.

You have to scroll past the older videos to get to your newest works-in-progress, since you haven’t switched the setting to ‘Display Most Recent’ yet. You open the file at the very bottom, shrink the window and drag it to the side, open the latest version of Forge, pirated. The mix is waiting in the sidebar, most recent on top. You fiddle with the volume, give it a listen before taking another look at what you have for the video.

The shots are clean. They’d better be; you’ve been teaching yourself since you were twelve and had just started getting into parkour after clicking a couple vids in a forum. Parkour had led you to freerunning, freerunning to tricking, and all three to hanging out after school with a bunch of similarly dumb reckless kids. When you’d all started getting better and fucking up your backflips less, some of you had started recording. The shots are clean, if pretty static, and the moves are slick, so all’s good on that front. The music just needs to set them up properly, show them off. You switch windows.

After a few preliminary edits, you pull the new track over to the video, let it run. No good. Intro’s better, but the beat’s off, doesn’t match with the aerial. It’s fine with the cheat after, though. Now you need it to slide with the vault, then lift, and shit, that’s not going to work. Back to the Forge.

You do every video yourself, start to finish: planning, performing, post-production, posting. Makes filming a real jazz, but you don’t complain, and neither does your audience. What’s there to complain about? You are a self-sustaining entertainment mogul, a veritable flash blizzard of stuck-to-the-screen entrapment, by which you mean that you have a moderately successful GrubTube account (turntech) and a webcomic you closed down a few years ago. You tell people you just grew out of it, like you grew out of ‘godhead.’

Like a lot of the kids grew out of jumping off walls and out of buildings. Some of them just ended up moving away, and you chat with them whenever you can, and with some other trickers off-planet who found you through forums and GrubTube. Most of them cut your handle down to ‘Tech,’ and that’s fine. Sometimes, they talk really earnestly about meeting someday, somehow, but interstellar travel is still pricey as hell for civilians. It’s cute to think about, but sometimes you just ‘x’ out of the window and go back to work.

Speaking of which, you close the chat application completely. This is no time to be distracted; the local company you did a motion-capture for a few months ago hinted that maybe their sister company had similar job in the works, but bigger audience, bigger pay-off. Your most recent project is your newest demo reel, and while you might be the best in New Houston, there’s a shit-ton of other competition out there.

They probably have other people to hold their cameras, too. One of these days, you should probably find some other nerd to team up with, someone who can frame a shot and hold the damn thing steady, but the last attempt didn’t work out so well, and you’re sort of not looking forward to another dent in your machines. Even if they still work afterward.

You only get up for lunch and are back on the computer stool fifteen minutes later, rubbing your eyes and trying to work the knots out of your neck and shoulders. The programs are just as you left them on your computer, but you pull up the video folder anyway and waste exactly twenty-three extra minutes rewatching old clips before getting back to work.

You stop half an hour before 1:00 AM, close your web browser, then save what progress you’d made. The chat application stays on, even if you close all the windows. You pick up your shades and put them on, tap them into place before grabbing a drink and a snack, head out to the park. You get there six minutes ahead of schedule, start doing slow, ambling circuits around the lampposts. This is sort of like the time four years ago when you’d completely forgotten it was your birthday or wriggling day, whatever anyone wanted to call it. You were early then, too, with no one else around, just minding your own business when suddenly a bunch of assholes dropped down or sprang out of nowhere to tackle you or pound on your back, yelling the words to ‘Happy Birthday’ in Human and Alternian.

Now it’s 1:17 AM, perfect time, perfect night, not your birthday, and you don’t know where those assholes are now. You’ve been waiting for seventeen minutes exactly, and if the trend of the past month and a half holds up, you will soon be waiting twenty-five for exactly no one. Whatever. You updated the post on the New Houston board of the forum, and pestered the fuck out of the ones who, you’re mostly certain, hadn’t moved or gotten culled perigees ago; if they want you, they can damn well come find you.

Which would be pretty easy, as you show up same time, same spot, three days a week. 1:00 AM, Serendipity Park, low wall on the west side approaching from Oak Street Station. You describe it as the one with all the dead trees, but there are two other stations within about the same walking distance. Those get a footnote on the main post.

Twenty-four minutes in, you’re almost done warming up, have started a course of one-legged squats along the wall for the hell of it. When you stand at the end to turn and finish it off, there’s a kid jogging towards you, all in darks, has to be a troll with that skin. There hadn’t been any response on the board, though, so he’s probably just passing through. You keep going, and wait for him to jog past.

But nope, he stops a short jump from the wall as you straighten up, halfway to the end. You glance down at him and get off the wall, land silently, transferring the impact, cushioning your joints.

“Hey,” he says, and you manage to keep from telling him to lay off the smokes. He’s got a sigil in gray across his chest, eyes probably sore behind those really fucking stupid goggles he’s got, irradiated red and yellow even in this light. You’ve never seen him before. You look him up (not really) and down (no comment).

“Sup.”

“Are you Dave Strider?”

Straight to the point and a total miss. “Nah, I’m his ridiculously handsome and equally talented twin brother.”

He scoffs, chin coming up and arms folding over the lower half of his sigil. “Real original, turntechbulgemunch. The question was just a formality, in case you were wondering.” You weren’t. “I’ve been following your channel for sweeps.”

Fuck, you’re going to lose this one, but you can’t stop yourself; the shot is too easy and he’s just a little too earnest about it. “Whoa shit, we’ve got a fanboy over here, stop, please, I’m blushing. Any other embarrassing secrets you wanna spill about touching yourself to my flawlessly chiseled body or what? Go on, it’s okay to share.”

He mostly looks annoyed, so this should be good. “Oh. My. God. Do you always follow your introductions with painfully desperate solicitations, or am I just that fucking special?”

You tip your shades down, give him the patented Strider Stare. He just gawps back for a second, eyebrows drawing down, but then he flinches, tries to hide it. You’re used to it, flick the sunglasses back over your freak eyes. “Getting shy on me, are you?”

He doesn’t apologize; you give him a point for that. “Wow, yes, you caught me, congratulations! I get my kicks lathering up and polishing my bulge for _hours_ after spooling up amateur freerunning videos! It’s the one high point of my otherwise miserable, gangrenous dribble of a life from the puckered rectum of existence, would you like to join?”

He just rolls his eyes at your sudden laugh, his entire head moving with it, but you barely keep a hand from shooting up to cover your mouth. They go into your pockets, and you smile for a little too long. Oh well. Play it off, Strider.

“Oh sweetie, tell me more.”

This fucker talks too fast, and you let him go. “Fuck that! You’ve clearly reached unheard-of levels of mastery in the skillset ‘Getting Myself Off to the Sound of My Own Voice.’ I’ve got nothing else to contribute, in the humbling face of such quake-worthy prowess. Behold, you asshole! I am shaking in my standard-issue ambulatory devices.”

You drop the smarm, quirk an eyebrow instead. “Feet?”

You get the finger and he gets another grin. Guy’s got bark in sp- whoops, sometimes you forget trolls have this weird thing about card suites. Doesn’t matter. Guy’s got bark. You hope to hell he’s got bite.

Up close, he clocks in at about five-seven, stumpy horns and blunt everything, nose, jaw, teeth, hands. Sorta stocky, muscles like he got them from holding other kids upside down in load gapers. Talks like maybe he was the one trying to keep from getting held upside down instead, but whatever. So strength, probably check. Coordination? Possible. Possibly negligible. Probably going to lose him in a month, god damn it, if he even sticks around that long. But he hasn’t walked off yet, so that’s a start.

“Hope you’re all warmed up from jogging over, because this jam session starts exactly now.”

“Aren’t we waiting for everyone else?” He takes his phone out to check the time, and your lips tighten.

“According to recent attendance rates, no. Now get your head in the game, new guy. Show me what you got.”

For one long moment, he lifts his head and just looks at you, and something in the set of his mouth reads disbelief. Then he squares his shoulders and says, “Hold this,” before tossing you his phone. You slide it into your pocket and watch him jog away, stop, size up the area. You watch him, and you are waiting for him to flub, to stutter-step and hit the wall, to flail his way through a vault or only be adequate. At best.

He scuffs his feet and shakes out his arms, and you want to tell him that these are completely unnecessary psych-out gestures, before he runs at the low wall and shows. He more than shows- he _blazes_. 

You watch him streak over the concrete all momentum and air, hands barely pressing the surface. He touches down, takes three steps and goes airborne again, double-legs, bent at the waist with feet fully extended and sweeping around like counting the milliseconds on a clock. As soon as he lands, he launches, corkscrew to cross, and he doesn’t stop fucking moving. He blurs a little when he slips out of the range of the lights, but you don’t take off your sunglasses.

On a 1040, he spins too fast, can’t get his feet under him in time, and lands knee-thigh-ass, is up and going for it again in the same breath. You want to tell him to calm the fuck down, to reset and try again, but that would mean he’d stop moving.

So you watch him and keep your mouth shut. He gets it the second time, but it’s not as clean as it could be, he doesn’t tuck his legs right when he should, which probably led to the flub earlier, but fuck it, guy’s got guts. 

He’s up on the wall again and running, easy as if he had a foot to spare on either side, and you follow him, bemused. He’s made his point, he’s pretty okay, what the hell does he think he’s doing now, heading towards that jumbled unfinished mess of construction, a horrible eldritch tangle of pipes and broken half-walls? You get a better vantage point and-

Oh shit. His tricks are okay, but here, navigating the city’s afterthought, here is where he _shines._ He speed-vaults the first pipe, chest-high, ducks under the second, weaves his way through the rest like a sun-streak across mirrors, hardly touching, untouchable. The last two pipes go one over the other, give him a foot and a half of space, and he gets his hands on the top one, slips through and keeps going, heading for the high walls and picking up speed.

You don’t know what you’re going to do if he fucks up. Not because of personal investment in whatever he’s doing, whoever he is. It’s just been a really long time since you’ve seen anyone else get to the top of those walls, and well, if he does, good for him. Better for you. They’re fourteen feet easy, the sides of that disjointed corner, and he veers out to come at the farthest in an arc instead of straight on. He’d better get this.

The first few steps go like the wall’s an extension of flat ground, and the next few rely on the speed he had coming in. He reaches with the same manic intensity he did everything else, one hand swinging up and gripping first, other latching on as he kicks and pulls up, getting his feet up into a cat hang.

He’s steady there, may as well have been drawn in the abandoned blueprints as the world’s worst-placed gargoyle. Then he shifts and pushes off again, twists in the corner of what would have been a room, sticks to the adjacent wall. You catch a flash of his goggles as he glances over his shoulder - at you, at the ground, you can’t tell -, then jumps. He turns in the half-second after his feet leave the wall, upper body first, motion sliding from shoulders to hips to knees in the follow-through. The balls of his feet hit first, and he compresses and goes forward, one arm touching ground hand-first as he rolls, spreading the hit over his shoulder and across his entire frame before letting it send him back to his feet.

Oh _shit._ Oh shit oh shit oh shit, oh shit, this kid is good. And when he rises up out of the roll, tilts his head back to look at you, that fucker, you’re going to punch him, you’re going to smear his face across the dirt: he’s good and he _knows_ it. 

Except you’re not going to punch him. You don’t know why you want to, but you’re not going to punch him. You’re not going to take him by the shoulders and shake him until his nubby little teeth clatter up to his nubby little horns. You’re not even going to make fun of his godawful goggles with the red-orange lenses, which are hideous and tacky and you grudgingly approve.

Instead, you flash a grin with too many teeth as he takes a few steps towards you then stops. You measure up his stance, the way he has his feet planted and head cocked like you owe him something. Like however you manage to pay, it’s still going to be wanting. Fuck this new guy. He’s got a fucking horrible laugh, too, all hoarse and broken like it got rattled hard against every single one of his ribs on the way up.

“C’mon, Strider! You think you got something worth seeing?”

WHO

IS

THIS

DOUCHEBAG?


	2. If You're Wondering

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS, and you moved into this shitsmear of a city not too long ago, with the assurance that the runners here were pretty good. Except maybe the assurance came from a couple years back, and maybe you didn’t bother doing any follow-up research, because there is one good runner, singular, and that is Tech. Which is to say: the enormously self-absorbed asshole also known as Dave Strider.

You will admit that you are severely disappointed, even if Dave isn’t very different from Tech. They both have the same broad shoulders and slender waist, same shades, same mannerisms, same features down to the slight bend in the nose where it got broken a few years back. The main difference here is that when Dave tells you, for the fifth time, that you could get more distance coming out of a kong when it clearly isn’t necessary, you have to grit your teeth and try not to hit the pause button. Which is presumably on his face. With your fists.

His tricks are just as good, though. Maybe even better, since you don’t have to watch them all from the same distant angle, but he still moves with too much flash when he isn’t outright tricking. It’s strange you have to tell him this. It’s strange you’re the only one there to tell him this.

It’s a big city, after all; there are plenty more runners arcing over walls, taking the hidden turns, bounding roof-to-roof. The human team is pretty rubbish, though; mostly part-timers. The troll teams are just as bad, possibly worse for splitting right down the hemospectrum, because of course highbloods couldn’t possibly stand to be shown up by a lowblood, much less tolerate their presence. And of course lowbloods wouldn’t put up with the kind of shit that was supposed to have been taken care of with the regime change a good forty sweeps ago, but fuck if anyone ever listens. And of fucking course neither of them will get within spitting distance of the douchebag formerly known as turntechgodhead, both for wildly different reasons that essentially come down to him not giving a shit about the hemospectrum.

Which, okay, you will begrudgingly give him credit for. You will also begrudgingly admit that had been another part of your decision to move to this city, out of what few options you’d had. If there had been a group with no real attachment to the particular hue slushing through your veins, carelessly yanked from the very bottom of the chromatic funbag of oppression and murder that the empire calls ‘the hemospectrum,’ you might have been safe.

And in hindsight, that had been a shamefully overoptimistic assumption on your part, because while Strider might, god forbid, actually have the right idea about the hemospectrum, that doesn’t mean everyone else does, and it certainly doesn’t mean he’s anything even remotely resembling dependable. People fuck up all the time.

Like you. Exhibit Letter One, in whatever passes for a human courtblock: You went to the first session, tried to impress him for no good reason, probably failed like a sponge-jointed little wiggler, and then kept going. What a fucking mistake! First of all, you have no other possible attachment to this insufferable dark-spectacled douchebag. Second of all, he is really. Really. **Really.** _**Really.**_ Fucking. Insufferable. The best part is that it takes five sessions for you to realize the magnitude of your error, as five sessions in is when he tries to rap. Badly.

“What the fuck am I listening to?”

He glances over with that asshole half-smile folded into the corner of his mouth, apparently undisturbed by being cut off in the middle of trying to find a rhyme for ‘-swipe.’ “Obviously just the sweetest flow this side of New Houston. How was that not clear?”

“You call that a flow? That was an overburdened braybeast suffering from several debilitating intestinal disorders. It was staggering under its load as it slowly shat itself dry, lurching a broken trail down an abandoned mountain path before finally falling by the wayside. That was the braybeast in the second fucking stage of decomposition.”

He laughs at you. Not like most people laugh, eyes crinkling and mouth wide, a full sound from their humor ossifications, which you are fairly certain that humans call ‘ribs.’ Instead the sound slips between his teeth in little breathy flickers.

“Always great to hear your opinion, Karkles. Now c’mon, do it again. You’re trying real hard to either bend both legs or extend’em, and that has to stop. One in, one out.”

“I _did_ that!” At least, you’re pretty certain you did; you’ll remind him about what your name actually is later. “One ninety degree angle and one straight line to construct buildings by, I am a geometrical marvel, Strider.”

“Okay, Pythagoras, then why don’t you do it again? Show the rest of the class. Protip: right angles aren’t always what you want.”

“’The rest of the class’? There’s no one else here, and I will say this once, just once, for the record, because you keep referencing people who _clearly_ aren’t here. It has literally been just you and me for the past three weeks. Tell me, is it your winning personality, Strider?”

He’s just a beat off in responding; well now, that might have been a nerve you just found. “What, I’m not good enough for you now? Karkitten’s getting big for his britches.”

“Do us both a favor and never call me that again. Was that seriously the ‘sickest burn’ you could come up with, or just the one you thought would make me want to empty my bilesac in a burning righteous fury? If it was the latter, I am _delighted_ to be the first to inform you: _it fucking worked._ ”

He just shrugs, has that half-smile on again. “Sure. Now, you gonna talk all night or get this done?”

There’s no point in answering that. Instead, you roll out the tightness in your shoulders, start to shake out your arms, and he puts out a hand, mouth flattening, and says, “Don’t.”

“Why not?” If he thinks you’ve got any real reason to listen to him, he is sadly mistaken.

“It’s seriously not necessary, is all I’m saying. You’re trying to trick your brain, like damn son, check this out, if I do a little dance, I guess the gravity gods’ll be too busy chuckling their fat asses off to figure out that this shitwad’s trying to do something totally legit. That’s stupid. Just trust your body.”

Sometimes, it’s hard to tell whether his rambles are just his usual lead-on bullshit or whether he’s being serious for once. Experience prompts you to go with the former, and you show all your teeth.

“What an absolutely graceless come-on, Strider. I am embarrassed for you.”

“Holy shit, listen to yourself, because I’m going to stop on account of not caring. Do the trick already, we haven’t got all night.”

You grimace. Tricking’s not really your thing. You have a couple down, can string an okay set, but fuck if Strider won’t shut up about it, won’t stop ‘trying to expand your horizons, Vantas, now come on, just try it out, and next we’ll hit up the symphony.’ “Quit rushing me.”

“Quit _stalling,_ ” he shoots back. Easy for him to say. He’s got little pockets of gunpowder where his heels should be, moves in constant bursts of motion like the ground’s got a bad case of his ‘sick fires,’ whatever those are. Telling him it’s efficiency over his showy fucking aesthetics has become a habit by now, but he keeps pushing the thought aside with convoluted stream-of-consciousness verbal sprawls that he thinks pass for sentences.

His focus is better when he’s laying out the steps for you, going motion to motion in short careful phrases. He pauses often, forehead creasing, sometimes makes little ghosts of motions as he tries to explain how one twist transitions into the other. The most recent, the one he tried to rap about, is the sideswipe. What you figured out - before the rap - is that it goes something like a switch before take-off, a swing, and fuck this.

“All right, stand the fuck back, I’m doing this.”

“Making it happen?”

“Shut up.” You inhale, exhale, start the turn on the balls of your feet. You go over the motions, foot up, back down, and _push_ -

“If you’re wigging over the ‘hips over head’ thing, it helps if you think like you want to throw yourself headfirst at the ground.”

“I said shut _up_ , Strider!”

“Hey, calm down. You got the 540 down pretty fast, you can probably get this, no problem.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. So hurry it up.”

He doesn’t answer when you flip him off, just puts his hands in his pockets and raises his eyebrows at you. Over the past few weeks, you’ve been learning to read his moods, the tiny flickers of emotion that pull at his features, his posture, the way he gestures as he’s talking or holds himself too still. This one you’re not too certain about. It might be heading fast towards ‘exasperation’ territory, or it could still be wandering aimlessly around Apathy Junction with absolutely zero inclination to either find a map or ask a hapless passerby for directions.

So you ignore him, settle yourself again, then start the motion between your shoulders and toes. Your core tightens as you make the turn, transfer momentum from one foot to the other and twist again, heel coming up off the ground. You haven’t got his height, which makes his jumps seem just unfair, but that’s fine. In terms of air alone, you can match him any time, and as you push off, you do, thinking your head down.

From there, it falls into place, the realignment of your spine to the ground and gravity, that long moment of being weightless. You land easy, bring the swinging leg back beneath you, carry the weightlessness through so you can hardly hear yourself land. That might be due to the sudden elated ringing in your ears, but fuck that, you might have done something right for a change. After all, “Silence demonstrates muscular efficiency” – Troll Lucian Freud. At least, you’re mostly certain Troll Lucian Freud said that, but you don’t care and it doesn’t matter. You landed. You didn’t die. You can do this.

“Better,” Dave says. “Hips higher, arms tighter. You’re going all over the place, and you can definitely get your feet higher.”

“That’s-“

“No, dude. No. This is what just happened.” He even imitates your set-up, the look down at the ground, a few scuffs of his sneakers against the dirt, then does a quick turn and is up. He gets the air, but head and hips are parallel at best, and oh shit, that flail is just embarrassing, how the fuck does he even do that, that is a blatant exaggeration, you are going to call him on his bullshit.

Or at least, you would, if there wasn’t an exceedingly good chance that he’s actually right, and if he didn’t say immediately upon landing, “And this is what’s supposed to be happening.”

He doesn’t even wind up, just swings up and around, only extra movement a quick flash of his hand to his glasses to keep them steady. His swipe is all easy air and extended leg to a soft landing, and he pushes the momentum back out into a flip as soon as he touches ground, and fuck him, he is just showing off now. He lands, tips his chin at you.

“You see?”

“A douchebag with bad taste in eyewear, yeah.”

He doesn’t flinch this time, just takes off his shades and turns them around to purse his lips at the lenses, all falsely understated consternation. “Poor kid, he’s so sensitive about his reflection. I’ll ask the doc to go for the matte finish next time.

“So tell me, Strider, because I am actually curious: Do you ever get tired of hearing your own voice?”

“Nope.” He’s stretching out, hands reaching above his head as he pulls a slight arch from his knees to the back of his neck. What was that about offerings to the gravity gods? Hypocrite. “How about you, Karkles? Do your dulcet tones ever grate on your own ears after a while?”

“Fuck you!”

“Hah, whatever. You wanna try again, or are there any other questions? Let’s get the shitty ones out of the way first.”

You’ll try again later. On your own. You haven’t taken a bad fall in front of him yet, and you mean to keep it that way. “So what’s after the sideswipe?”

“Whoa, hey, what an actually good question, Karkat. Top grades and gold star, glad you’re finally coming around. There are a couple. I mean, it’s not like there’s a set curriculum or whatever, because that’d be stupid. If you got any suggestions, let me know, but I’m just going to say snapuswipe for now. You need to get a really solid sideswipe down first, but it’s worth it.”

You don’t know what a ‘snapu’ is, and you’re not certain you care to. “That’s a fucking stupid name.”

“’ _Karkat_ ’s a fucking stupid name, you horse’s ass, and it is an incredibly swag move, end of story.”

You roll your eyes. “So what does this ‘incredibly swag move’ of yours look like?”

He grins, a surprised flash of teeth and not a little bit of ego; he has probably been waiting for you to ask, that narcissistic prick. “Two out of three? Not bad. Check it out.”

Like with the sideswipe, he just goes for it, a cut of motion and aligning limbs in the half-dark, outstretched leg bending slightly in again as he stays airborne, twists through a second full rotation.

But he wound up wrong, something’s off about his turn, and as he comes back around and down, his feet just scrape where they should have landed and he keeps going, shoulder then head hitting dirt as he tries to get his hands down. He thumps onto his back, air coming out of him in one strangled wheeze, and all you do is stare. Then he drags in another breath, huffs it out again before clenching his hands, and something inside your brain clicks, gets your mouth and words working again.

“Holy fucking shit, are you still alive?”

He hasn’t moved aside from the continual flex-unflex of his fingers and occasional wrinkles in his forehead. “Yep.” He clears his throat. “Couldn’t be better.”

“Nice try-“

“I’m fine, fuck off. Just gonna hang out here for a couple seconds, though.” He starts testing his arms, stretches them out over his head. “Wow. Hope you were taking notes, Vantas. If you fuck up, it has to be at least as spectacular as what just happened here.”

Normally, you’d give him some grief over ‘spectacular,’ but you will admit that there had been something merit-worthy about this particular fuck-up. A large part of it is that he somehow managed not to die. “For what it’s worth, you did get some ‘mad air,’ ‘dogg.’”

Even lying down, his mouth drops open –which is to say it opens _slightly_ more, the expressionless douche to give whatever horrible mess of inanity he’s preparing a little more exit room- , and he actually flips his shades up to look over at you. You’d been _trying_ to give the asshole a compliment, but lo and behold, he is probably just going to start with his usual turgid bile-spill of lazy rhythm and bad attempts at irony.

Instead, he just rolls to his side and laughs. Not in his usual way, but an actual full sound, shoulders and sides heaving with it. He doesn’t know what to do with himself when he laughs like this, and tries folding his arms around his sides, then laying them flat, then folding them back again.

He still has his arms crossed when he flops back to grin up at you, and you manage to not take too long to smile back. Turns out Strider’s pretty okay sometimes.

“Did you seriously just say that?”

OH FUCK, did you?

“’Mad air,’ oh my god, did that just actually happen?”

He sits up, still a little breathless, expression crooked, and readjusts his sunglasses. “Fuck, I can’t believe you actually said ‘dogg.’ You’re pretty okay, Vantas.”

“Have you ever had an original thought in your life, Strider? I was thinking, ver-fucking-batim, the same thing literally three seconds before.”

“Hey, good for you. I’m glad you figured out that you’re pretty just the way you are. New entry on HiveJournal, right? Link me.” 

“No chance, those are private documents for my viewing alone.”

He does the half-laugh thing again, then runs his hands through his hair, over the back of his head, checks the fingertips. “Bet it’s Blingee’d.”

“Even if it were, the contents would still fall right under the jurisdiction of ‘ _None of your fucking business._ ’ And you’re not bleeding.”

“Yeah, glad you’re telling me from way over there. Pretty sure I’m okay though, thanks for the concern.” He’s getting up, dusting himself off even if he’s probably just spreading the grit around, and you roll your eyes, gesture him closer.

“Turn around, dumbass, let me see.”

His eyebrows go up and he doesn’t come closer, but he turns when you start towards him, lets you brush the dirt off his back. It’s just a couple scrapes; may as well make sure they’re clean. “Looks fine. Just let me-“

He waves you off, steps away. “Okay, enough, quit it, that was all I needed to know. What’s up, Karkat, getting all mama cluckbeast on me?” 

You snatch your hands back, get a good sneer up and ready by the time he’s looking over his shoulder at you. Holy fuck, did you ever get carried away; you’re not used to treating injuries that aren’t your own. “Of course not! It’s just that your ridiculously frail human meatsack probably has one of the worst immune systems in the known universe, hands down. You’re going to get an infection, Strider. It’ll turn gangrenous and get infested by vermin. Your arm is going to have to get amputated at the shoulder, and that’s if you don’t die of bloodrot first. I am looking out for you and also your career, you nub-fondling ingrate.” You’d forgotten for a second that he could go to the hospital if it came to that.

“Wait, is this just your usual brand of chumpfuckery or are you actually making less sense than usual? I honestly can’t tell.”

“Neither, genius, it’s basic first-aid!”

He shrugs. “Yeah, whatever. Just let me cry on your shoulder about it, boo hoo. Kiss it better, okay?”

“What- no! Fuck you! I try to express a perfectly reasonable concern for your health and well-being, and this is the thanks I get? Yet another brazen solicitation, the second in about as many minutes-”

“My god, how does one person even come up with this many ways to so hilariously wrong in an hour, you are a prodigy, Vantas. A prodigy in being a complete moron. Going to be like little baby Mozart, all plinking away at the ivories, except instead of etudes and shit, it’ll just be dumbass all the way down.”

Well. Okay, maybe you came on a little too strong with the infection thing, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t still right. “It could have been serious.” Too bad even you don’t sound convinced.

“So good thing it wasn’t.” He glances around, goes to pick up the messenger bag he’d tossed aside at the beginning of the session. “If you’re done, there’s a place I was meaning to look over a few days ago. Interested?”

Definitely. Anything to get out of this particular stupid fucking conversation. No way you’re letting him get off that easy, though. “What, you’re not going to try the ‘fuck you’-swipe again?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, let’s just go.”

Turns out the place he was talking about is an old research facility, sign out front overtaken by weather, age, and graffiti. He heads past the sign, towards the loading bay cut into the side of the building, with multi-level platforms and rails running through. There are a few stairs between levels, but mostly they’re connected by ladders, blackened steel with the coating stripped off in places, eaten away by rust. Some light from the street washes in vague shapes, hard light bouncing off a couple edges, but it’s still dark, even for you. 

Strider tosses his bag against a column, tucks his sunglasses into the neck of his tank top. “Let’s do this shit.”

He goes left and you go right, long easy strides before making the leap to the lowest loading areas, one foot planting up top, other swinging free as your shin taps against the edge before you pull it up and over, keep going.

Not fast. This is an exploration, not a demonstration, and you settle into a moderate jog, get to a ladder, take the rungs two at a time. At the top, you reach out and give the surrounding railing a good hard rattle, make sure it’ll still hold your weight. While you’re at it, you glance around, try to see what Dave’s up to.

He hasn’t gone higher. Instead, he’s running at a rail on the edge of a loading dock, jumps to the top. A railwalk? Okay, Strider, do what you want.

But as soon as he lands, he twists completely around on the rail, drops backwards and catches himself on the middle bar and dock edge, hands and feet. Slick, but he could just do a turn-vault and get pretty much the same result. You swing into a similar position a good twenty feet higher, glutes nearly knocking against heels, and start making your way along the outer edge of the upper level. When you look again, he’s back where he started, taking another run at the rail. You vault yourself back onto solid ground, take a walk. Not too much to see, just small windows about at eye-level now, walls, the rail. You head towards the first door you see, go through to explore the rest of the building.

This is slightly more than just idle curiosity. You make it your business to learn all the back alleys and hidden rooms, even the dusty ones with broken windows and leftover debris and, uh, questionable articles of clothing hanging out along the join between floor and wall. Really? As far as pail-worthy sites go, this is pretty low on the list; you are an expert on such matters. You are not, however, an expert on what that huddled mound of fabric is supposed to be, and you really don’t want to be. Rather than investigate, you keep walking, try to get a decent sense for the inside of this goddamn building.

The point here is to have a plan. Several, actually, for if and when things go wrong. By then, you hope to know the city better than a fresh molt of skin, like duck in and turn through here to dodge human enforcement officers. Or climb that wall, cross that roof, duck inside the next building, down the stairs- all right, fine, you won’t actually know the entire city that well, but you intend to have some damn good routes planned out ahead of time, and plenty of space to improvise.

This particular building is one you might be able to improvise with, but you’re not counting on it. Doesn’t connect to anything, which just makes it a dead end, and it’s been mostly cleaned out. It’s not even a very complicated set-up, just the basic ‘one long box connects to several others, and also there are probably doors’ kind. Wow, enthralling. You take a quick jaunt up and down the stairs, navigating mostly by feel. Whatever research was being done in here didn’t need much fresh air or natural light. You take a quick look around every floor ground-level and up, but with so few windows, there isn’t much to see.

When you come back out, Strider’s pulling some fancy fucking thing, riffing on his rail trick from earlier. The idea’s the same -run at the rail, get a foot up, drop into a hang at the end-, but with a jump instead of just a turn and slip, so more air-time, more twists. He lands it, sharp twists, clean hang. Looks like he’s breathing out, entire body going slack, then he just goes up and over again, switching from middle to top bar as he pushes off, easy as that. Goddamn, he’s good. You’re never telling him that. 

He glances up after landing, straightens up, and you suppress a twitch. His timing gets downright fucking _creepy_ sometimes, but that’s another thing you’re never telling him.

“Anything good?”

“No, building’s mostly cleaned out, and I can’t see a damn thing. Were you really just working on that the whole time?”

“Don’t try to pretend like it wasn’t worth it.”

“Don’t pretend like you’re not fishing for compliments, Strider. If you’re looking for someone to feed your over-inflated ego, I suggest you look elsewhere, because it sure as fuck isn’t going to be me.”

He turns aside, hand coming up to his face, looks like he’s coughing. No, he’s probably just laughing at you, well, fuck him, you were serious. That asshole. He’s glancing up at you again, has his thumbs hooked into his pockets.

“Yo, Karkat.”

“What?”

He hops back onto the rail. “Ground is lava.”

_“What?”_

“C’mon, get off the ground, dude, you’re burning up.”

“Fuck you!”

Unfortunately, he figures out that ‘Fuck you’ is a rough approximation of ‘Hold still until I get down there so I can punch you in the face,’ and is gone by the time you come bounding over the rails to make good. You drop back to the ground and skid to a halt. While you could not possibly give less of a shit about his dumb ‘everything you know and love will soon be incinerated by this unstoppable ooze of molten rock, isn’t pretending fun!’ wiggler game, the rails were the quickest way, and you’d wanted to work on balancing anyway.

“Wow, zero survival instinct, no wonder you assholes gave up on that entire interstellar conquest thing. Aside from it being, you know, hella lame. Also, you clearly weren’t looking when you were inside. Swag as fuck in there.” He’s leaning on the handrail; you’ve traded places.

“You cheater! You had to be on the ground to get inside!”

“Oh yeah? Why don’t you come and prove it, Vantas?”

His stupid avoidance game is bullshit and he’s bullshit, how could he even see in there, and if he’s inviting you to make that an insurmountable fact, then you are so there. You’re running towards the nearest ladder, and he’s standing on the rail again, looks up – _why didn’t you look up_ – and jumps for the exposed ceiling, grabs a strut. He swings himself inside the building as you haul yourself up the ladder. As soon as your feet touch the floor, you’re sprinting after him.

Somewhere between running down the stairs and getting thoroughly lost after being led in circles around the lower floors, proving Strider wrong on every conceivable level becomes something more along the lines of playing full-body keep-away while ambushing each other in the dark like feral little knee-biters. He’s unsurprisingly good at it, especially when he gives up his inane lava pretense. Part of it, you’re certain, is due to his job. The other part is that he has a light.

He accidentally shines it in your face when you’re stalking each other through a windowless room. It’s not particularly bright, but it’s sudden, and you both reel back as he flicks it off. You think you hear a ‘Fuck, sorry, you okay,’ but there are giant glaring holes ripping through your vision and you’re busy explaining to him and the entire building at large exactly why he is a terrible fucking specimen of humanity, so you can’t say for sure. You’re also not certain when he leaves, but you know he did, because when you make it back to the doorway and shout for him to put that fucking thing away, his voice comes bouncing back from the stairwell with some predictably derisive and barely comprehensible word-hash. You don’t see the light again, though.

Which actually turns out to be not as great as you’d assumed it would be. It usually gave you a pretty good drop on his location and a better sense of which corners to avoid, whenever he wasn’t somehow pointing it at you. He doesn’t do any better, either. Five collisions in the dark and two instances of stubbed toes later, you both call it quits. You come out with a banged knee from an unseen piece of furniture that hadn’t been cleared out, and he’s got a couple new scrapes along his upper arms, makes a big deal about keeping them out of your view. You smack him on one, and he shoves you, then goes to get his bag. Now you’re both on the lowest loading dock, stretching out.

“Hey, if you ever quit that shitty grocery store gig, you’ll probably do all right on the base.”

You snort, unwrapping your fingers from the bottoms of your shoes as he settles into a modified lunge, one long even line from his back to his outstretched heel. “Yes, absolutely, that long-awaited chance to finally ascend to the ranks of the vaunted parkourriors, I’ll submit a letter of resignation tonight! How did you know I would fucking _jump_ at the opportunity to utterly embroil myself in the niceties of military politics and get the chance to be stabbed multiple times, right in the excretory blood-filtering sacs, because I was carrying a piece of paper! I’ll put that one in the ‘maybe’ pile. Right underneath slathering my genitals with a potent mixture of honey and mating pheromones as I beleaguer ripperwasp hives with the blunt stick in my other hand in a misguided attempt at naked apiculture.”

“That one actually sounds pretty good. How’s the health policy? Does it come with dental?”

You’ve moved on to your forearms and wrists, have one arm extended, palm out and other hand carefully pulling the fingers back. “It comes with ‘choke on a heaping sack of shitsponges’, Strider, and also ‘the sponges are on fire and filled with wasps.’”

He switches legs. “That is the stupidest thing I think you’ve said all night. Like, okay, what order did this happen in, did you set the sponges on fire first and _then_ fill them with wasps? Or was it the wasps first, in which case, _why?_ ”

“Because fuck you, you over-analytical piece of shit. Fuck you is why.”

“That answered exactly nothing, but okay. I didn’t need to know anyway.”

You’re just about done when he brings his bag over and crouches beside you. His shades are still folded into his neckline, and he looks weird without them. Almost normal. Just another tired-looking human, but with eyes that register the same hue as his shirt. Could just be the tint of your lenses, but it freaked the fuck out of you when you first saw. He’s holding something out.

“Orange?” he says, with the barest inflection. The question is more in the tilt of his head, and when you hesitate, his hand twitches back. “You allergic?”

“No?” As if you’d know. He hands the thing over without further question and sits down, hanging his feet over the edge and staring somewhere past them. After a few seconds, he sighs, then turns away to rummage in his bag again.

While he’s distracted, you turn the ball around, give it a few investigatory scratches. So you’re pretty certain you’re supposed to eat it, why the fuck doesn’t anyone eat oranges in movies, and, well. It smells okay, and that’s all that really matters, right? Right.

You’re mid-way through your third bite when you hear, “What the fuck are you doing?”

What a moron. “Eating an orange.”

“Uh, have you ever had an orange before? You’re not supposed to eat the skin.” He reaches over with his free hand, little whitish scraps balancing on his knee, and you swat him away. “Hey, c’mon, I’ll show you.”

“It’s fine the way it is!” Your mouth is full of half-chewed fruit when you say this, so it comes out mushier than intended. He makes a last, unenthusiastic attempt at snatching the orange, then gives up.

“Okay, whatever. Go for it. It’s just gross.”

“The skin’s where all the nutrients are! Isn’t that how your human food works?”

“Jesus. I didn’t know trolls got Sesame Street.”

“What?”

“Wiggler show. Also, hint: that’s not how all human food works. I am about one hundred percent certain that’s not how troll food works either, just by the way. Seeing as how they’re not actually that different.”

“Please don’t tell me you actually think I care.” You cram the rest of the orange into your mouth, and his mouth goes a little flatter. A wince? Interesting. He’s finished peeling his and you wait for him to just eat the thing already.

Except now he’s disassembling it. It does that? What a completely pointless exercise. Human fruits are stupid. You almost feel sorry for his confused, excessive existence if the rest of his food is like this, except hold up, that is Dave Strider you are thinking about here. Okay, so what if you maybe almost feel sorry for him. You wipe your fingers off on your pants and maybe almost feel sorry for him _platonically._

You are so busy almost feeling sorry for him platonically that he has to rap the back of his hand against your knee to get your attention.

_“What?”_

“Here.” He’s holding a denuded piece of his orange out to you. “It’s way better without the skin.”

“I doubt that.”

“Okay, now you’re just being a prick for incredibly unnecessary reasons. Cut it out and accept my magnanimity already.”

“Charity, Strider? Coming on a little strong, you graceless fucking douchenozzle.”

He throws it at you, and while you refuse to catch it on principle, you don’t dodge fast enough and it bounces off your goggles. “Quit flattering yourself, Vantas. Mouth like yours, I got better chances sticking my dick in a blender.”

“Ugggghh, _thank you_ for that immensely appealing mental image. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m expecting an in-depth philosophical discussion with meals from seven sweeps ago about _why you are a stinking purulent excuse for a smarm-ridden asshole_ in approximately three seconds.”

“Ew.” He pulls out his phone. The screen lights up his face for a second. “You know, if oranges give you the shits, you can just tell me.”

“Your misplaced concern is less than appreciated, Strider. If I had to say, I’d place it somewhere in the vicinity of ‘Who even gives a fuck?’, right between ‘Not me’ and ‘Absolutely no one else.’”

“Oh my god, go home, it is nearly 4 in the morning, we’ve been here for over an hour.”

“Capitulation, is it? Took you long enough. I was wondering when this seizure-go-round of mutual nub-suckery would finally end.”

“Don’t try and fool yourself, Karkles. You’ll be back next week.”

Oh fuck him, he’s right. You sigh, tipping your head back, brace your hands against the platform and swing up to a stand. “Same time?”

“Yeah.” He’s collecting the orange peels off his knee. “But hey, quick question. Do you wanna try doing a video? Like, next time.” 

What. “What?”

“Don’t play coy, Vantas. Do you want to maybe flip some sweet tricks for the internet at large, get some cyber-stalkers of your own? It’ll be you in front of the faceless masses, thousands of unseen strangers crying, ‘Oh Mister Vantas, oooh.’”

“Once you put it like that, I’m going to say the reasonable answer is ‘Fuck no,’ you dumb shit.”

“You sure?” He’s glancing over at you slantways, head turned just enough so that you can’t actually see his eyes. He probably only has you in his peripherals. “I mean, feel free to think it over-“

Hesitation’s a terrible thing to see in Tech, even if it’s only in tiny gestures, like a slight cheek twitch, a bit of tightness in his neck. He should have put his glasses back on. “Hold up, fuckwad, why are you, of all people, suddenly assuming I’m a reasonable person at all points in time? Which, okay, let’s face it, I am infinitely more rational than you could ever hope to be at any given moment, but this sudden display of good sense is suspicious coming from you.”

“Huh, my bad. Motion to strike that oversight from the record? Fucking approved, bang goes the gavel-“

“Motion denied, dumbass! As are your completely inadequate attempts at plausibility via legislinguistics, get that shit out of here.” 

“So, that a ‘yes’?”

“Fuck yes.” You’re probably going to regret this later, but fuck that shit. Film with Tech first, have nail-biting, hair-yanking anxieties over bad decisions made on endorphin-kicks later, life is too short. You’re going to keep telling yourself that until it’s true- oh god, when did you ever get this stupid? “Hell fucking yes.”

Now he’s getting up, giving you a truncated half-wave with a handful of orange peel, other closed around the straps of his bag. “All right. Eat light and bring lots of water, this is going to be profane amounts of ill. Ah, shit.” He’s dropped a piece, kneels to try getting it, slings his bag over his shoulder.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, give me those.” You have a great plan. You have the greatest plan.

“What, no. I’m just going to throw them out, it’s fine-“

“I’ll do it. Teamwork, Strider, and also there’s an automated waste receptacle right on the way to the station.”

“You mean a trash can? I know it’s all solar-powered and futuristic or whatever, but it’s still just a fucking trash can.”

“It’s the thing I’m going to throw those peels into, because I am a conscientious, upstanding citizen, a fucking flawless example to grotesque toe-chewing wigglers everywhere-“

“Ugh, just take’em, I am too tired to argue about this. I swear to god, though, if you eat those-“

Too late. If only you had an instant image capture device.

“Oh my fucking god, seriously? _Seriously_? I just said- holy shit, you are disgusting, good morning, Vantas, I’m leaving.”

He drops off the edge and lands lightly, knees bent, doesn’t roll. When he stands, he lifts a hand –you’re assuming that’s supposed to be a wave– and starts walking. “See you next week, then.”

Before he goes around the corner, you can see him shake his head. You’re still chewing. Turns out orange peels taste like victory. Chalky, bitter, _delicious_ victory.

The taste stays in your mouth the entire way to the subway station and through all eight stops. Turns out that once the ‘victory’ part is gone, orange peels just taste awful.

Regardless, you feel good as you get off the subway and head up the stairs to street level; home’s just a few blocks away. You’re progressing, if Tech’s offer was any indication, and maybe you fucked up tonight, but he did too, and you got a couple good digs in there. It’s a pleasant sort of feeling, this tar-heavy satisfaction, and you get to savor it all the way down the street and into your apartment unit.

Once in, you lock the door behind you, go to check on the recuperacoon more out of habit than any real hope that something’s changed. Sopor’s still a nausea-inducing puce, so still dodgy as fuck; there’s probably something _communicable_ in there. You managed to get a human bed for pretty cheap (okay, a human _mattress_ , and a couple pillows) a few nights after moving in. The pills, though, the little sopor pills for the frequent wanderers and the hard up? You got those the first night in town, and they work all right. Sort of. You go to get the bottle from the windowsill beside the mattress, think better of it and leave it on one of your five pillows before trying to remember where you left your towel instead. The time it takes for a capsule to kick in is varied, to put it charitably, and the last thing you need is another staggering dose of drowsiness hitting in the middle of a visit to the standing ablution traps. Besides, you’ve got a couple more hours before you absolutely have to go to sleep.

With that in mind, you start actually looking for your towel, going over the motions for the sideswipe again. That’s for tomorrow night, though. Sleep first, trick later. Maybe you’ll even check out the snapuswipe and a couple others. Ha, what if you got the side and snapu down, that would fucking show Dave Strider. You can learn this shit faster than he can blunder around with the delusion that he’s actually teaching it.

Except wait, hang on a second, back this entire lamentable train of thought up, all the way back to its original station, you’re black-flirting. You’re _black-flirting_. Both your palms slam against your face- Ow, _holy shit, that hurt._ You wrench off your goggles and manage not to throw them across the room; you would be so fucked if they broke. Instead, you rub out the creases they made around your eyes and drop them on your bed, thump heavily down beside them. What a cretinous misbegotten nooksniffer you are. There are _reasons_ why any sort of quadranted nonsense would be a terrible idea right now. You can probably draw up a pretty comprehensive set of bulleted points for your own obviously sorely-neglected edification. 

First of all, you shouldn’t be getting involved in any concupiscently-related quadrant nonsense _at all_ , or did you forget the part where you were a fucking good-for-nothing blight upon the future of untold later generations of troll society. Second, even if you were going to ignore the first point, it sure as fuck shouldn’t be with a _human_. Third, you’ve got an entirely separate set of points for why that human shouldn’t be Strider, even if he’s got nice shoulders and clean aerials, and also that slight curve of a smile that’s perfect for pummeling.

Except you don’t always want to punch his face in. And that’s… healthy, right? Getting the better of a kismesis doesn’t always have to be about making them bleed. Really, not continually wanting to lay him out on the floor with a merciless combo fuelled by your painstakingly cultivated wellspring of loathing is perfectly reasonable. After all, what kind of horrible, unapologetically ass-backwards imbecile gets stuck with only you for a practice partner in a city with at least three other teams of runners, that is completely pathetic, and- no, stop, that is not a road you want to be going down, holy shit, no. Please continue reading through the exhaustively compiled list, you made it for a reason, you are going to actually write it out and nail it to your own fucking forehead if that’s what it takes to actually get the message across, so help you.

Fourth, humans don’t _get_ quadrants, and even if they did, Strider sure as hell isn’t showing any sign of it. That, and you’re almost entirely certain that a properly caliginous relationship might be beyond him. Them. If that’s not one of the most pathetic things you’ve ever heard, you’re not certain what is, and no, no no no, this line of hate-pity bullshit needs to end immediately. You’re fucking quadrant-flipping without even settling _in_ a quadrant to begin with, how fucking overeager can you get, what kind of hitherto unsounded depths of desperation can you fucking plumb, you are getting _ahead_ of yourself. Not that there was anything to give ahead on.

Wait.

Wait, what? Shit, no. Get. GET. You meant ‘get.’ Most of you meant ‘get.’ Part of you is unconvinced, and holy shit, that didn’t come out right. Most of the aggregate collection of lackluster, half-heartedly assembled parts you call a think-pan meant ‘get,’ you are not carrying this thought any further.

Part of you –the same part!- begs to differ, and you could just fucking scream. You press your hands over your eyes, flop back on the mattress. This isn’t going to end well.

FOR FUCK’S SAKE, PICK A SIDE.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the curious:  
> [Sideswipe](http://www.club540.com/trick/sideswipe)  
> [Snapuswipe](http://www.club540.com/trick/snapuswipe)  
> (Fun fact: [Steve Terada](http://www.youtube.com/user/SteveTerada?feature=watch) is credited with the invention of both these tricks.)
> 
> 'Silence demonstrates muscular efficiency' quote actually said by Dan Edwards in this [video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tEexuDN83k&list=UU4Xa9S7w76IF2-cESqZLZjw&index=1&feature=plcp), and [Lucian Freud](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Freud) was actually a painter.
> 
> [Totally awesome fanart](http://mustachioedoctopus.tumblr.com/post/24045441691/hey-canalsobemoe-since-today-is-your-birthday-i)!


	3. Really Got Me Bad

=> KARKAT: BE THE OTHER GUY

You didn’t get the job.

You did get an e-mail notifying you of this, which is presumably better than no e-mail at all. Doesn’t matter, though. Even if you’d gotten it, you probably would’ve turned it down anyway, as you are a busy guy and teaching Karkat how to film is taking longer than expected.

“Oh my fucking god, hold it _steady_ , I said. You’re worse than my grandpa.”

“What’s a ‘grandpa’?” The human word comes out of his mouth oddly, farther at the back of his throat than it should be, and you stop fiddling with the camera to think about it.

“Like… if your monster-dad or whatever-“

“Lusus.”

“Okay, whatever. If your lusus had a lusus, and it still came to your hive at Troll-Christmas and other major holidays and pinched your cheeks and brought you presents that were never really what you wanted. And also smelled a little weird, and also _couldn’t hold a camera straight_ and cut the heads off of all the tacky commemorative photos, leaving only the supremely shitty holiday sweaters. That’s you, Vantas.”

Last time you insulted his camera skills, he threw his sneakers at your head. You weren’t fast enough to get him down in a headlock, and had to settle for getting one arm behind his back as he bit a neat semi-circle around the base of your thumb, elbowing your kidneys and flinging insults until you finally let him go. He ignores you this time. You’re almost disappointed. “You have a lusus-pa?”

“Uh. Grand-lusus, I guess. And nah, it’s just. How do you not know what a grandparent is?”

“Troll,” he says, with an undertone of _‘idiot,’_ and yeah, you’re fully aware of that, what a fucking smartass.

“Well no shit, but don’t you work at like, Kroger and Spawn or whatever’s? Kroger and Sons’? Kroger and Gender Ambiguous Children’s? Kroger and Good Old-Fashioned Genetic Squalling Monkey-Faced Progeny, my point is that they’re human.”

“Seriously? _Troll._ You work pretty closely with a couple of those, right? Why don’t you detail the finer points of auspisticization while we’re having this heartfelt exchange? You know, while we’re telling each other the delicate, specific nuances about the bizarre cultural practices of the species we _don’t belong to?”_

“Shut up and film, asshole.”

He flicks the lens-cap shut, shoves the camera at you. “Shits to that. _You_ film.”

“Okay.” And it really is. “Just go do your anti-gravity magic over there, and if you want to throw in some new tricks, that’d be great.”

“Yes sir, okay sir, please treat yourself to a towering mound of ‘go fuck yourself,’ _sir._ You’ve been working yourself to the allegorical phalangeal stubs, Strider, you deserve it.”

“Ooh snap, looks like I’ve just been told. Good one, Karkat. Sarcasm. Haven’t heard that before.”

He just grins at you, this smug shithole of an expression that you’ve taken to calling ‘The Cumsucker 5000,’ which means he _knows_ he won. Really, you gave him that one; wasn’t worth getting worked up over. You’ve got more important things to deal with.

“Hey, so, I’m thinking we could probably use this footage for something.”

“Really?”

He says it a little too carefully, turns his head just a moment too late, and yeah, fucker, you heard that hitch. He’s glancing back over the courtyard, probably working himself up over scoping out the best spots. Kid’s still a little starstruck, not that you blame him. Or maybe just camera-shy. The initial film tests were a disaster, and there had been a stiff dose of procedure revision and more than a couple arguments. He kicked you once. Then after you’d settled on a system that seemed like it would work better, he kept ducking out of the camera focus, blasted through moves as quickly as possible, didn’t milk the airtime. Was a damn shame, but he’s mostly over it.

Good thing, too: you meant it about the anti-grav magic.

You don’t know how he does it, and especially not how he makes it look so easy. The shit he pulled with the abandoned construction site? Okay, so he looked at that one first, but you’ve since learned that he doesn’t have to. Not with the Pax Alterra monument. Not when scrabbling across the roof of the New Alley Theater, and those tiles are slippery as fuck. Not racing through your personal favorite, the Praepes Gardens in the Gemini sector, even if he’d stopped short at the gates. That might’ve actually been the best footage you’d gotten all last month.

He pulls that kind of thing all the time, pulls it almost blind, coming across a new clutter of impudent jutting obstacles and going through at a dead run, easy as bleeding. Same for walls, going up and going over. And down. Sometimes, you want to ask him if he has a death wish, or see if that one chick you know online will draw up a waiver, legally binding and everything, but he always comes out okay.

You’ll admit it’s kind of weird how he manages to get out of these things unscathed, though. Even you still scrape up your hands sometimes. Hell, just the other day, you made a bad grab and got a quick slice across your upper arm from the fucking follow-up; good thing minor first-aid supplies can just fit in your pocket.

“Okay.” He still hasn’t moved. C’mon, Vantas, time to get this show on the road. “Hey.”

When he looks over at you, expression still a little distant, you flip the camera on and open, press ‘RECORD.’ As you put your hand in your pocket, it’s a short stop over to pat his ass, just a friendly reminder that ground control is down here, numbnuts, there hasn’t been a launch yet. Aw, fuck it. You wind back and let loose, he is going to be furious- holy shit, get some ye olde timey onomatopoeia in here, _pow._ Dude works out. Which was a given, but still. You keep the view fixed on his face. “Good luck, buddy.”

It is and will always be comical the way his expression changes, flicking from shock to disbelief to outright incendiary rage, and he takes a deep breath, winding up to let you – mainly your future without hearing aids – really have it, but before he can get the first word out, you nod to the camera. “We’re rolling.”

His mouth promises murder, but he shuts it, makes do with a particularly emphatic double-bird before bolting. While he loosens up again, taking a lap around before hopping the low walls, acing the easy drops, it’s your turn to pinpoint the best shots. There, he has to go big or go home; there, good combo waiting if he doesn’t fuck up the steps; that’s just a good set-up, period. Whatever he pulls there doesn’t even have to be fancy but if he adds a little pizzazz, great.

He goes sideswipe to butterfly, jogs a few steps before ducking into a cartwheel, only one hand touching ground. You’ve been trying to get him to work some more tricks into his routine instead of keeping them clumped separately, but he just rolls his eyes and tells you it’s stupid. It’s cute how he thinks that’ll keep you from noticing when he throws in an extra twist or two, butterfly or otherwise. To be honest, those need a little improvement, a cleaner lead-in and a slightly tighter rotation so he doesn’t stumble on the landing, but that’s precision work and he’ll get that done. He had two swipes down in three days, careful cut motions with edges like glass, and he made it look effortless. Getting it to film that way is going to be a bitch, though.

Once he finishes, bounces a few times on the balls of his feet before scuffing his heels, he gives you a thumbs-up. You make a final lens adjustment and wait.

You both know the drill: you get an idea of the direction he’s going, but he gets a three second headstart and goes where the fuck he wants. If you’re not there, well, sucks. You tried it the other way around, where you set up and he headed for the view, but he tightened up too much, started stuttering real bad and almost bashed his shins into a couple walls. There are some really embarrassing toe-stubs hanging out somewhere on your hard drive now. Performance anxiety or something. Everything turns out way better if he just does his thing and you follow. You can get him to do another run-through if you point, but he decides the tricks, the approach, and the follow-through, which is okay because he usually has good taste. Operative word here being ‘usually.’

Tonight, he goes straight for the three rail set-up, bless him, because you are already there when he taps rail to rail like solid ground despite the slant. From the third, he powers straight into an aerial twist and lands it, a precise stick onto the edge of a flowerbed. You rough up some petunias catching the swingthrough to swipe that comes after, but he breezes over, drags out the hangtime and nails the landing. He’s been practicing.

You get caught on a sprinkler and miss the dash vault after, _fuck,_ but you’re ready again when he tacs off the wall, cuts into a combo with some of his best moves. No time to plan, just time to get this fucking right. You wait until he steps into the trick, zoom slightly, frame rotation and air to get the best parts of both, yeah, _hell yeah._ You are well and fully capable of serving whatever he’s ready to dish out. You’re going to set this fucking table, get a nice polish on the best silver, whisk out the candles and giant floral centerpiece.

This should be harder: he doesn’t telegraph. His moves just come busting straight out of momentum, no warning shots fired, like hell he’s taking prisoners. Like when he veers back to the rails, those vaults just happen, stairs and all. His kash is slick, and he hits one of those small cement pillars, no fuss, no muss, launches long and low into a kong, then keeps going. It’s easy, it’s effortless, and you’re there to catch it all.

The seconds spin past and you hardly notice; time-telling’s for chumps who don’t know the feel. You’re circling now, fairly certain he’s heading for the second low wall, ready to catch the leap and then the push to the significantly higher one just behind it. You don’t follow, not with the camera, not with this location. Too much hassle for poor follow-through; top of the wall is endzone.

He aces it, one foot on the wall, knee bent, other tapped against it to take out some of the momentum. His knee straightens out and he gets both feet up, stretches his arms over his head. Okay, he earned it and that’s a good shot, but you haven’t got all night, there are other sites to hit. You whip up some spotlight-hogging young virtuoso comments, just in case- oh good, his arms are coming down. Crisis averted.

When he turns, you point. Back to the rails. The first time through was good, but it could be better, he could have gotten a cleaner rotation, a little less goofy arm-swing on the railwork. He just drops, doesn’t nod, doesn’t thumbs-up, nothing, but you’re both already moving into place. You know he saw. He knows you know. It’s that simple.

You point him back to five more spots before you stop filming and give him the okay. He slows to a walk, stops altogether, rolls out his shoulders as you start the replay. When he comes up beside you a minute later, you tilt the screen for him, rewind.

You wobbled a little on one of the best combos. Totally your bad, but he’s been consistently getting more air, so there’ll be other chances. And actually, the shot after came out way better than expected. But that speed vault combo’s getting dropped. Didn’t transition as well on camera, and he stuttered a little during the approach. Rookie mistake, but it happens. You catch him wincing beside you and it’s funny, because that’s the exact motion he’s making on-screen. You can let him live it down.

Especially since it looks like that was his cue to amp up his game. Like that swing from lamppost to street level? Total Ninja Warrior; he couldn’t get you to keep that out if he tried. Between this and the past two sessions, you’ve got some definite shoo-ins for the next vid. Actually, you might have the entire damn thing.

“Nice,” you hear distantly, realize it was you. These files need to be on your self-contained computing device soon; you need to get your hands on your synth. He rips through gravity with a wildfire’s disregard, and everyone should sit up and take notice. When he doesn’t answer, you click the little viewscreen back into place, look up and holy _shit_ he is right there; personal space, Karkles. Time to make a point, give him a quick little smooch or something, right there on his fucking nose. It’d go with the theme and-

He beats you to it, hands pressed to either side of your face and mouth right over yours. _Christ,_ he’s fast. It’s not much, just a quick, hard press and then he’s back to a bare inch between your faces. Carefully, he bites out, “I am not. Your fucking. _‘Buddy.’_ Are we clear?”

You know this scene. There’s some street-tough or government big guy telling his bad-haircut insubordinate to get in line and stay there; the other guy, - who probably turns out to be the sneak all along, man, who didn’t see that one coming? – sort of plays hard-ass back and says something really fucking corny like ‘Crystal’ or whatever the troll equivalent is, but that’s stupid.

You don’t oblige his lameass movie re-enactment and shove at him instead. “Dang, Karkat, gotta let a lady know when you’re going to make a move. I would’ve puckered up or something.”

You can see his eyes past the polarization, and even through the lenses, they are _livid._ Could be leftover from the ass-slap, could be from how you’re not playing along; whichever it is, there’s a good chance he might just ignite from sheer force of outrage alone. While that would be interesting, it would put you out one pretty decent runner. One pretty _really_ decent runner. You have to do something.

So you shove him again, since he’s still got you by the sides of the face. “C’mon, Vantas, I get it. Your ass is off-limits. Now cut it out.”

For one long second, he doesn’t move, and his fingers are actually pressing sort of hard into your cheekbones. Man, he totally one-upped you, but you can probably get him back. Just sort of peck him again and see him go all embarrassed, trying real hard to bluster it off. Yeah, that is probably the best idea, but he jerks away from you before you can land it, before you can even start. When he stalks off, you watch him go, another small reason to be almost disappointed- except oh.

Wait.

This is the real thing. Straight-up, full-on disappointment, crossed over on the ferry from Maybeland over Possibility Bay. Huh. You’re not really certain how that happened.

Then he stops and turns, not even too far away so you can just about feel the indignation rolling off of him in waves. How does one guy even get that pissed off? “So are we done, or should I brace myself for any other entirely fatal hits to my dignity and bodily autonomy?”

It’s with a terrible jolt, right through your ribs and spine, that you realize: Karkat Vantas is hot as fuck when he’s angry.

Welp.

=> DAVE: FLIP IT TUNRWAYS

You don’t have to. You really shouldn’t besides, not when you’re racing Dave to the top of some bizarrely-named apartment complex; that would take time that you absolutely do not have to spare. It’s just two rails ahead and you refuse to dignify them with even a vault. Instead you jump, tap over them and get as much distance as you can while pushing off the second. There’s a scuffle behind you that you’re going to assume is Dave taking precious seconds to vault at least one of the rails because he doesn’t know what’s fucking good for him. That’s fine, you’re okay with staying in the lead.

Then you skid to a halt at the crosswalk, grab onto the streetlight to keep from doing the one-man idiocy tango with the sudden stream of traffic when the light turns green. Dave trots up beside you, chuckling under his breath. He nudges you.

“Nice save.”

When you jab him back, he just waves you off and shoves you off-balance. You elbow each other until the light changes.

Once the light flashes white, you both bolt, and he veers off on the other side of the street, disappears towards the front of the building while you head into the alley. Dead-end, but there, that corner, that pipe. From what you saw of the building, you’re estimating five or six stories? Yeah, you have this squarely within the confines of the victory sack.

You speed up, go wall to wall to pipe, and FUCK, that was a bit of a wobble after the grab, but nothing serious so that’s it, you’re set. You start hauling yourself upward.

There’s a fire escape to your right, somewhere around the third story, but you dismiss it. Too far, no point in taking time out, you’re fairly certain the straight vertical approach is going to work, it is going to fucking work, and Dave will just have to live with his poor life decisions and his sub-par understanding of traceur philosophy. You know exactly what it is; you know how to do your research, and it’s not that hard to find. “Be strong to be useful,” Enrique Iglesias. You beat Dave in arm-wrestling about two times out of three.

This also means you usually climb faster, so if this were just simple ‘who can surmount the obstacle which just happens to be an entire fucking building first,’ it’d be no contest. As this has a primary focus on both intelligence and ability, though, you’re still going to go ahead and call it: No contest. You’re good.

He’s going up the inside of the building, and that’s the only thing you know for certain. So, he’s taking the stairs. You don’t know how quickly he actually goes up stairs, you’ve only seen him during endurance runs, but he can’t beat a straight line, even if it does have a steadily more irritating tendency to wiggle. Maybe fifteen feet from the top is around when the slight sway of the pipe shifts from annoying to something like a problem, but there’s the fire escape that you better be able to swing over to, and window ledges besides. The only real thing to worry about is a fall that would leave you with cracked bones and aberrant gouges instead of a simpler ‘dead.’ You climb faster.

“Hey,” is all he says as you start pulling yourself onto the roof. Then he grabs your wrists when you splutter and slide a few completely horrifying inches back.

“I’m fine!” you snarl, get a better grip and scowl very significantly towards his hands. When he holds them up and slides over to a ventilation duct, you swing a leg back, muscle-up onto the roof. You dust yourself off, head over to the other side of the duct because there is something incredibly suspicious about this, you are calling bullshit. Elements of this particular experiment –especially the conclusion- need to be investigated more thoroughly. “How did you-“

“Elevator,” he says, leaning on the duct and completely failing to squelch down a broad grin.

“Fuck you, there is no way-“

“Elevator. Seriously. We can do this again, but facts is facts: elevator’s the fastest way up.”

“Not if it’s out of commission!”

He straightens up, lifts his shades and takes an exaggerated look around the skyline before dropping them back into place. “Do you see a fire? Yeah, me neither, I think we’re all set.”

Stupid barf-gargling shitstick. “So you’re saying it’s pointless to prepare for an emergency situation?”

“No, I’m saying that if you want to play pretend Emergency Medicatastrophe Technician, leave me out of it. I’m not interested in your kinky roleplay, all right?”

You refrain from playing cosmeticorrectionist and fixing that ridge in his nose for him. “It’s not roleplay! The basics between this and practicing any of the vaults is the same: that you’re so used to interacting in that particular environment that you don’t have to think when placed in a new setting with similar elements.”

“It’s roleplay when you get the costumes out and do the voices, and come on, it was not even about emergencies or anything. I dunno what’s got the elongated pubicle up your protein-chute or whatever tonight, but I said inside the building’s probably faster, you said, ‘Let me be a dumb shit,’ we tested it out, and I was right. If you wanna cry about it, I guess I have a shoulder handy, but you need to man up and admit it first.”

You throw up your hands. “Fine! Fine, I was wrong, it’s much faster to rely on extremely fallible mechanical deathtraps to get to the top of a building.”

“Dude, I saw that pipe wobble, no way that’s safer than a fucking elevator. You want safety, proceed with caution and take the fucking stairs, what is even your priority here?”

Options! You could just fucking shout the word at him. You want options! Elevators make your horns itch, make your skin crawl like dewinged gnatbeasts. With elevators, there’s only up or down.

“Like I’d have to tell you! It’s goddamn leagues better than yours, I can fucking say without any hesitation.”

“Sure,” he says, in the way that means he’s already signed out of this particular conversation. He’s drumming his fingers, shifting his weight; he hardly ever stops moving. “Keep telling yourself that, but how about we move on with our lives? More important question right now, and that is ‘can you bring it?’”

This fucking routine again? He does this every time he wants to goad you into some mistaken form of exhibitionary one-upmanship. Okay, since he’s apparently so goddamn eager to get off on his egotistical trip, you can be the better half of this experimental partnership, but any and all adulation will be kept to a severe fucking minimum. You _‘tch’_ and jerk your chin at him. “You first.”

You get a quick half-grin, bright and easy like you both weren’t two steps from driving each other demented with rage. Weird. “Thought you’d never ask. Watch and learn.”

You step back as soon as his hands flatten on the duct, just manage to get out of the way as he monkeys over. He touches ground for a moment, looks like he’s setting up for one of his old familiar routines, but no. No, it’s something completely different.

He leads off with an invert, head down, knees mostly straight, pretty much an aerial but something’s off, it’s faster and has more turn in it. That shit’s his specialty, though you don’t know what to call them half the time. If you can peg the type, he can narrow it down, get the name of the trick eventually, but if he thinks you’re going to bother remembering more than half of them, he is wrong.

Now he’s doing one of those fucking weird twisting cartwheels where his hands don’t touch the ground, and that’s all you really care to know about it. From there, he picks up momentum, foregoing air for speed and fuck, his head’s so low, that is dangerous, that is disgustingly fantastic. You’ll still laugh at him if he falls, but you will also be just a little let down. Only a little, though. You wait for it.

You keep waiting as he strings them together across the rooftop, one improbably named show-off twist after another. Except wait, you sort of know that one. He called it a ‘crowd awakener’ last week, then wouldn’t leave you alone until you repeated your pantomime of reaching for the snooze button, citing a large variety of reasons in which the nonsensical ‘kawaii as fuck’ featured heavily; the lack of any blatant sarcasm means that you are mostly certain he was joking.

Regardless, it’s a good move for him. You can admit that he pulls it off well, and it has all that over-exaggerated, clearly compensatory flash he likes. It brings him maybe five feet from an upright airshaft, and he covers the distance in three steps, each one a hard drive down from hips to knees, trying to pick up speed where he shouldn’t have the space for it. Couldn’t be anything but a wall flip, though he doesn’t even need it at this point, and it breaks the pattern of his routine. Worse, he’s making himself work for that air, goddamn it, Strider, that’s not even the point. Just fucking get the momentum and quit needlessly complicating things.

He bangs up and off the aluminum, hollow percussive beats booming probably all the way down into the rooms below, and his spin’s too slow. For an instant, his face looks like it’ll have a serendipitous meeting with concrete, but he gets his feet down and lands it, has to take a few quick hops to keep his balance, yeah you’re definitely calling that a stumble. Before you can say anything, get a really good cutting remark lined up, his hand swings up and out, and he flings over a quick careless gesture that’s easy enough to read: Your turn. Fair enough.

You ‘bust one out,’ or work through a new combo that you think looks pretty good. It’s heavier on rotation, getting as many twists in as possible before landing. Even Strider admits that this aspect is difficult; it requires a shitton of speed, for one thing, and precision, for the other. One of the few things that you agree on is that both of these are your strong points. You allow yourself to be a little smug about this.

For some reason, it’s obvious to you when your legs should follow your chest, the exact moment your core should lock and loosen. You remember the motions where you don’t remember their names, the minutiae in arm variation, when one leg crosses over another. More importantly, you know how to use the momentum when coming down from a 540 turn to your left to pull off a 720 once you go airborne again. It’s easy; once your feet touch down, you stick it, slide and readjust, make sure to let the rest of you keep moving, keep swinging through. You just have to get your joints aligned again and _push._

You fuck up on the last one and deck yourself in the face. Stupid miscalculation, you kept one arm too loose and nearly clobbered yourself in the eye. For once, Strider has the grace to not laugh out loud, but you are certain he has the most repulsively amused grin on right now. You’re not going to look, though. There are more important things on your mind, like getting the goggle frames off your eyelids.

Once you get your goggles resettled, you get the first word in. “Could you go three seconds without succumbing to the self-congratulating delusion that more flips gets more ‘points,’ or whatever useless, arbitrary system of value you’re using to determine your personal achievements, and take out the wall-flip at the end? It breaks up the combo and is completely unnecessary besides.”

He just shrugs, still has a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth. He dimples sometimes, if the comedic farce in question is stupid enough to appeal to his deficient sense of humor. You hate that you notice this. You hate him for making you notice this. “Yeah, maybe. It’s a work-in-progress, there’re a couple things I dunno if I want to keep or maybe swap out. What about the 720, yes-no-Dave you’re an idiot the answer’s so self-evident I’m going to keep dodging the question like a total tool?”

“The one with the extraneous turns after the, uh, opposite flip-kick thing?”

“Gainer switch?”

You wave him off. “Yeah, whatever. No, that’s fine, but you need to work on your landings.”

“Aw, come on, Kitkat, cut me some slack. Shoelace was untied.”

“Ugh! I take it back, ‘Karkles’ somehow manages to be less nauseating in retrospect. And like you need any more slack, you sloppily grandstanding fuckwit! Where’s your audiovisual preservation device, I’ll show you.”

“The camera? At home, recovering from the last fucking calamity.”

“You’re overreacting. I didn’t break anything and you know it!”

One eyebrow goes up and he hooks his thumbs through his belt loops. “You set everything to sepia. I’m sorry, but in this production team, we have this little thing that I like to call ‘standards,’ not ‘pretentious hipster bullshit.’ How the fuck do you even get to the color menu by trying to zoom out?”

You gift him a double dose of your central ‘go fuck yourself’ digits, and gladly.

“Well that cleared things up, thanks, Karkat. Glad I can count on your gift with your big boy words to shed some light on a situation. I mean like, god _damn,_ son, you’ve got Euripides, Willy Shakes, and Winslow Homer quaking in their booties.”

“I’m sorry, Dave, were you trying to make a withdrawal from the bank of ‘Does Karkat give even half of an encrusted, crumbling, nigh-on calcified turd?’ Because I think you will find that we are _fresh out of shits to give.”_

You really fucking are. It’s not like you ruined anything anyway. His personal videos are already a nonsensical skew of pixilation and color shift; like one segment of washed-out brown would make a difference.

“Awesome, great. So how about we have a performance review for two secs, like serious professionals doing serious professional things?”

You’re not even going to laugh at that. “We’re not serious professionals.”

“I know you aren’t, but what am I?”

You swipe at him, but he just leans out of the way with that barely amused little smirk. It’s so fucking contrived! You bet he spends hours in the mirror practicing for maximum douchebag effect.

“Jesus fucking Christ, my nana hits better than you. It’s embarrassing to watch, Karkat. I’m embarrassed for you.”

You spare yourself another lecture on his obscure human references, and just don’t ask. “Not half as embarrassed as I am, bearing witness to your sad attempts at some ‘stylin air.’”

“Whoa, constructive criticism, Vantas, gotta make a compliment sandwich. Like see, check it: I like the goggles, they’re a sweet visual touch, make you stand out. Compliment. Quit fucking smacking the shit out of them because you won’t lock your elbows. Criticism. You nailed that landing though, gj gj, we’re very proud. Compliment. And now you.”

“Don’t you _dare_ patronize me! I told you what I thought. If you’re going to tell me what’s wrong, just fucking do it already and cut the bullshit!”

“All right, fine, since you asked so sweet. Some of your shit is starting to look the same, you need a little more variety. Gotta work on your showboating, man. I know you can do it, just need to crank it up a few notches.”

‘Showboating’? _‘Showboating’???_ He says it so casually, like some indisputable, painfully self-evident truth. Like the last few sessions weren’t enough, like you haven’t been twisting the dial towards jaw-dropping feats of acrobatic prowess this entire time. Oh, you will fucking show him ‘showboating.’ You tip your head towards the next building over, bare all your teeth. Doesn’t matter that they’re blunt, they can do a fucking hell of a lot more damage than his can.

“All right. Check this out.”

You like to think that you’re pretty good at eyeballing distances by now - you’d better fucking be! - and the gap between this roof and the next one over is slightly more than twice your height. Completely fine for jumping, maybe even expected, but you’ve got something else in mind. He’s glancing at it now - a casual once-over, he clearly doesn’t get it yet -, then back to you. Well then. Time to let him know exactly what is up. You break into a run and head straight for the edge.

“The fuck are you doing!”

Yeah, hell yeah you can do it. Nothing to lose, really. You speed up, steps pulling longer, get to the edge and push. You’re already curling forward, bringing hips and knees over your head and trying _really_ hard to not look at the streets and sidewalks below, fuck do you have enough momentum, are you getting the distance, you thought it through, sure, but _did you think it through enough-_

Your feet hit the rooftop, heels barely touching and knees already bent as you roll, maybe a little harder than you would have liked, but you’re not thinking about that now. Oh god, you made it, you landed it, you’re going to get the fuck up and not fall on your ass like a complete imbecile. You straighten up, take a deep breath and hold it, release. Just that, though; you have to play it cool here. You dust off your arms, slap your shoulders a couple times – all here, all present, yeah you made it, congratulations on finally catching a break in the lottery of the abjectly terrible! -, then turn. What now, Dave?

He’s just standing at the edge, raises a thumbs-up. “Nice. Hang on, I’ll be right over.”

“You giving the flip a shot, dipwad?”

“What? No. Just jumping it, now fucking gangway, because I’m coming through.”

“Are you serious? This is like a foot less than the jump in the park, and you flip that one all the time!”

“Funny how that one isn’t fifty feet in the goddamn air, holy shit, no, I don’t think so. Remember how I missed that one three weeks ago? Actually, no, remember how you make that one like half the time, what the actual fuck, let’s have it be stated for the record that you are completely out of your fucking mind.”

“And _you’re_ afraid of heights!”

“Uh, no. You’re thinking ‘landing.’ As in, ‘hello, acceleration, great to meet you and your friend gravity tonight, glad to see you brought another person, cement.’ Too bad the table only seats three, and guess who’s been voted off the island. Spoiler alert: It’s you, Karkat. It’s always. Fucking. You.”

You are too old to be making cluckbeast noises. You are entirely too old to be demeaning yourself by making _really loud_ cluckbeast noises across the city rooftops, and you are especially too old to be making the arm motions while stalking back and forth on the edge of the building.

You are totally making cluckbeast noises and flapping your elbows. A muffled ‘Shut UP, taintsniffers!” drifts up from somewhere below you, but you ignore it. Even from this distance, you can see his head go up and back, oh he is so pissed.

“Yeah, real convincing argument right there. Get the fuck out of the way, roll out the red carpet, let me show you how it’s done.”

You take a few steps to the side as he heads back, taps a vent presumably for luck. While you’re settling into a crouch, he’s sprinting for the edge, knees high and steps long, thank god, because you just could not stand it if he backtracked on that after all the shit he’s given you about fucking biomechanics and muscular efficiency. 

He pushes off way too close to the edge for your liking, and was that a stumble just then? You’re suddenly stricken by the thought that you’ve just goaded Dave into possibly the flashiest self-eradication maneuver possible, you really cannot watch this, oh fuck, you have to watch. He can make it, he can definitely make it, oh god, why are your palms sweating.

He’s twisting differently, curling in and to the side, torso hanging parallel to the rooftops and street for one breathless moment, and then he brings his knees around, feet tapping against the roof before he pitches into a roll, swings upright again. You wipe your hands as he starts dusting himself off, then stand up and stroll over to slap his back.

“I knew you could do it.”

He swats you away. “Oh my god, don’t touch me, Vantas, I’m going to catch the stupid.”

You mess up his hair until he ducks away from you. “You’re immune, you piss-puddling little wiggler. How have you seriously never done that before?”

“Okay, next time I have to do a front-flip while evading a fucking rooftop attack, you get one free ‘I TOLD YOU SO,’ which, surprise, is irredeemable because it’s never going to fucking happen.”

“That was clearly a sideflip! What an abhorrent show-off, can’t even remember the trick you did properly.” He’s just about got his cooldouche ‘do smoothed back into place, and you reach out to give it another ruffle.

He smacks you in the chest. “Quit it.”

You smack him back. “You first.”

_“Excuse me?_ You started this, I’m just making sure the ledger stays balanced.” He flicks you on the cheek. “Primetime accountant right here, crunching these numbers like a chimp with a mouthful of sunflower seeds. I should be in stocks.”

You grab at his wrist, but he yanks it away. “Those have nothing to do with each other!” You take a step forward.

He takes a step back. “Says who.”

“Says anyone who isn’t a sack-fondling ignoramus blissfully jawing out his own shameful incompetence.”

“Says the pint-sized motormouth busy flipping it up like some Cirque douche Soleil dumpwad in glittering tights. Hey, what happened to the efficiency over aesthetics talk, Karkat?”

He keeps sliding away, each movement an inverse of your own. Well, fuck him, he’s not the unreadable elusive dipshit he wants to be, and you’re fucking well going to prove it. “Oh haha, Strider, very funny. Coming from you, that’s hilarious! Except I’m lying, there’s nothing about your entire lamentable existence that doesn’t provoke copious bouts of weeping from everyone around you.”

“Whoa, someone’s jealous. It’s okay, Vantas, one day you’ll go to sleep in your weird-ass slime bed, then wake up as a beautiful butterfly.”

“That’s not even _close_ to anything that actually happens. Someone clearly needs a lesson in basic physiology!”

When you grab for his shoulder, he just ducks, pivots around you. “I’m not gonna touch your junk, dude.”

You wheel around, hands up, and this time, he stands his ground. “Great! I’m glad we can agree on something, even if you’re an appallingly dense bulgestench with no sense of direction.”

This altercation is threatening to rapidly shift from low contact to grapple, but fuck that, you can take him. You’re more than happy to show him just who the fuck is boss around here, even if that’s probably not the best decision for an immense number of reasons. Not your biggest concern at the moment, though, especially since he seems to think he’s getting the drop on you, but no way, Strider, no how.

You shift your weight, and he just raises his eyebrows. In all honesty, you’ve been itching for the chance to definitively prove that he’s not half the hotshot he thinks he is; his comeuppance has been a long time coming. You’re sizing each other up, starting to circle when his pocket chimes.

You freeze. He glances down, and that’s an opening – getting sloppy, Dave -, right there, fucking perfect. You ball up one hand and go for it.

His head snaps up and both hands come out of his pockets as he twists into you, hold tight around your wrist. And FUCK, you’re weightless, everything’s weightless and possibly upside down, gravity’s just realigned itself, holy clump-squirting _shits._ You have barely enough time to try and hang on, tense up, maybe you can take him down with you, and then reality slams back into place.

You’re lying on the ground, wheezing, wondering if those little prickles on your shoulders mean that something broke skin and cloth or if you’re just going to have a set of seriously not-excellent bruises spreading across you in the near future. Strider, that asshole, is just crouching over you.

“Holy shit, you okay?”

The fucking weight on your chest won’t ease off, so you just swat at him and snarl. The corner of his mouth twitches and he settles to one knee.

“C’mon, you little cockmunch, get up. No, sit up, I meant. Sit up. Stay on the ground. Relax, okay?”

He’s got his hands behind your shoulders, levering you up, and for a second, you’re still dazed enough to let him, still preoccupied with remembering how to breathe. Then panicked reflex sets in. You’re swinging at him, anywhere in his general direction, can’t be bothered to aim.

“Holy shit, let go! Let me go!” It comes out strangled, breath dragged in and words clawed out through the hold your ribs still have around your lungs. You don’t care.

“Fuck, take it easy!”

“LET GO!”

“Okay!” And he has, is sitting a few feet back with his heels dug against the ground, hands up, palms out. You scramble around to face him, _shit,_ that was a bad idea, you’re starting to wheeze. “Okay, let’s just calm the fuck down already, panicking’s only gonna make it worse.”

Right. Sure. You knew that. Sort of. You take an experimental breath, and it gets halfway to your lungs, maybe. It’s a start.

“Arms over head, if you can. Need help?”

“No.” You straighten up, try to lift your arms and get your elbows somewhere in the vicinity of your head before giving up and propping them on your knees. You’re stuck in the impossible situation of only being able to exhale, _thank you so fucking much,_ lungs. What a great help that is when you’ve got no god damn air left. You try for another mouthful, suck in dismal failure instead of oxygen.

Dave sighs, shifts his weight. “Doesn’t even have to be much. Hands at the back of your neck is fine.” 

Oh, _now_ he tells you. You get your hands up, lace your fingers together, and alright, that was something. Great, you’re not going to embarrass yourself by expiring from something as simple as accidental asphyxiation. Fantastic. Something grudgingly eases up in your chest, and oh god, breathing is about the most amazing thing in the known universe right now. One more inhale and you’re probably around thirty percent lung capacity, which is a hell of a lot better than the approximately _zero_ you were floundering around with a few seconds before.

You hear footsteps, twist around to see Strider heading over. No, you don’t think so. You scuffle away, but that just sets off the wheezing again. “Just gonna make sure you’re okay, because I literally haven’t seen a fall that sad in forever, you’re like the fucking glassy-eyed posterchild for shit no one should ever do. Hold still.”

“Back off!”

“Look, I’m not going to poke at it or anything, I’m just going to let you know if you’re-“

You swing at him. Bad fucking move, that tightens up your muscles in all the wrong ways and you miss to boot, he’s skipped back and out of the way.

“Christ, calm the fuck down, Vantas, what is your _problem?”_

You’re just about done coughing, so that’s something, but basic respiration remains a chore. You don’t put your hands back behind your head; you don’t need that shit anymore. Instead, you curl them over your knees as you glare at him and snap, “My _‘problem’_ is the incredibly reasonable thought that maybe I don’t want your fucking hands all over me!”

That takes all you have, and you put your head down to once again figure out push-pull and aerating sacs, how do they work.

“All right. Sure, that’s fine.”

He goes to start pacing at the other end of the roof, and you’re rolling out your shoulders, picking at the fabric to check for rips and wetness. Seems fine. At least for now. You rub your hands over your face, don’t touch the goggles, as much you’d like that tension pooling in your ocular hollows to dissipate. That was close. That was too close.

He stops pacing, and you eye him as he takes a few steps closer, then turns and takes another step back. His hand comes up, rakes through his hair, and he bridges the silence first, head turning partway, back still to you. “Hey, I’m sorry. You okay?”

What a question. “Fine.”

Nothing, then a long inhale; his waist pushes out with it. You wait for the next question, and you’ve got a good hunch on what it’s going to be. He has to have figured something out, how obvious could you even fucking get, flipping your shit like that.

But he wouldn’t ask, would he? Strider fancies himself too clever for that. He’d probably just call later, or maybe he’s even calling now, hands in his pockets, thumb dialing the number by feel. All he’d have to do is knock you over again, hold you until the drones came, then collect his reward, oh fuck, you knew this was a bad idea, shit shit shit, how many flights is this building exactly?

“Christ,” he says again, scuffing one foot against his other ankle. His shoulders come up, straighten out again. “You know I’m not gonna hurt you, right? Like, on purpose or anything.”

No! No, you most assuredly do not! “Do you visit hospitals often, Strider? Because you have the most fucking charming bedside demeanor, this incomparable air of reassurance that yes, the afflicted is in capable hands and definitely won’t be in any mortal peril anytime soon. The Heir to the Kingdom of Shoosh, it is fucking you, Strider.”

“Hey.”

This is seriously not the best use of your newfound breathing ability, but you know what? You’re not done yet. “Or have they just permanently etched the nauseatingly vertiginous dissymmetry of your features onto their ganderbulbs, do they have tattoos depicting the smug quirk of your ne’er-soothe-well squawkflap with a detailed description of the wretched miasma you drag in with you like miserable valet, as a preventative measure to keep entire wings of the terminally ill from committing pre-emptive suicide en masse! You’re shit at this, Strider, just go ahead and add that to the long list of your abject failures already. Here’s a thought! _Why don’t you just give up on this self-appointed loser-thon while you’re ahead?”_

“Karkat, what the fuck.”

Oh shit, oh shit, oh fuck, you went too far. He twists around to face you, hands loose and open, and he doesn’t even look hurt, just confused, and that’s somehow worse. You knew it was a stupid fucking idea to flip your shit, and then you went and kept doing it! This shit hasn’t cooked even partway through, it has spent more time in the air than on the grill, and you are a gibbering boil upon the ass of creation and especially interspecies diplomacy, how can anyone possibly be this stupid. You should find out fast, because you keep fucking doing it.

“That sort of-“

“Look, I don’t care, it’s _fine._ I’ll just be over here, busting my super inferior ‘the fuck is Karkat going on about now’ ponderloaf or whatever on where the hell that came from.”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

His face snaps into a blankness you’re probably supposed to call ‘stoic.’ “Oh, wow, baby’s first time being absolutely right for once. I’ll start a scrapbook, get some pink ribbons or something to stick in there. Maybe I can press some leaves from our precious seasonal memories.”

“Would you shut _up_ about the stupid bullshit things you’re never actually going to do!”

God, you wish someone had told him: it’s not a poker-face if you can only hold it under duress. “Okay, you know what? Fine. I’m done. Heading out now. See you in a couple.”

You’re such a dick. “Great! Later!”

He has to circle around to find the fire escape, and you don’t look at him, don’t even get up until five minutes after he heads down. You count the seconds exactly. That’s enough time for him to be long gone; definitely no way you’re going back the way you came, and there aren’t a hell of a lot of other options. You get up and take the ladder down, slowly.

This isn’t supposed to happen. Taking him down a peg shouldn’t give you this sinking feeling instead, like you’ve lined your digestive squeezetubes with lead, weight pulling you straight down. Makes the drop to the ground easy, though, and you straighten up, head for the nearest crosswalk without glancing around. Instead you nearly walk into a streetlamp, have to scuffle out of the way and nearly bump into a greenblood. You throw each other identical ‘Watch it!’ sneers, useless braindead posturing for primitive throwbacks, and you turn away, cross the street when the light flashes. It’s still a little hard to breathe.

You take a quick detour into a corner store for a bottle of water, head back out. Howell Square’s just a block away, might as well have a sit-down and try to figure out how you fucked up this time. It’s barely a minute at an easy jog, and once you head in, you do a quick scan, then head for the statue and settle onto the base. Not like you had a lot else planned for the evening besides continually running headlong into Strider’s fucking impossible façade-stacle course of bad quips and pathetic attempts at pretending he doesn’t care- oh god. That’s where you went so ass-barfingly wrong.

His stupid cool-kid front, you slugwitted fuck, _you bought it._ You knew exactly what it was, you called him out on it every time you fucking met, and somehow, some way, some part of you still managed to sincerely believe in his ironically apathetic machismo! What goddamn shit-smearing levels of dumb can you reach, you are several steps removed from even being something so sophisticated as a tool; you are a rudimentary stick poked up the primordial ancestor’s asscheeks, fervently dreaming of the day that you may ascend to the ecstatic state of being used to dig for ants. You can’t believe you were ever deluded enough to tell Dave that he was the failure, all fucking circumstances aside.

Well, can’t do anything about it now! You have definitely fucked up to the degree that it’s just about beyond any chance of repair, because when it actually comes to being the dismal failure, you are simply the best. Turns out the best’s mouth is dry; you guess you can graciously allow a drink of water for the reigning champion of awfulness, since you already went to the trouble of buying the damn bottle. You twist the cap off, then immediately thrust the bottle away from you because _surprise,_ apparently you can literally do nothing right tonight, and that includes not fucking drenching yourself. Stupid goddamn flimsy plastic. You shake your hands off and try to blot away the worst of the spill, then give up and take a drink.

Tonight has been fucking perfect.

=> KARKAT: FLIP

He comes to the next session, but his sarcasm lacks bite, comes off more as a hesitant tepid dribble than the usual frothing explosion of bad acid-reflux you’ve come to expect. Well, shit. You’ve been sitting on an antacid line for a few hours now.

When you tell him it’s conditioning tonight, he just goes with it. Not that he puts up an actual argument most of the time, but he makes sure to at least register a few objections. While he probably knows he still has the right to be an overexaggerated little spewbot of vitriol and misaimed accusations, you think you should remind him. It’s practically your civic responsibility. You figure he’ll lose his shit, yell for a while, then quit it with the head down, hands low, cagey bullshit and you can both go on with your lives.

Something’s clearly wrong when twenty minutes into a routine, he just calls you an ass-monger and doesn’t tack twenty carefully-chosen adjectives to the front and back. You give it another ten minutes before you quit baiting him, right around when he’s trying too hard to not give a shit that you picked the duck walk. He hates the duck walk. You hate it too, but you don’t spit out tangled knots of invective about how _much_ you hate it, and if he’s not going to, it’s almost not worth it.

So you decide against another lap of imitating Scrooge McDuck, switch to shimmying around the field on all fours instead, some classic QM. While you’re at it, you drop the chitchat to one-liner bare necessities: “Second round.” “Change direction.” “Holy shit, I said ‘change direction!’” Awkward.

The one-liners get somewhat less grating during the intervals, mostly because it’s enough of a hassle to just breathe after sprinting the field length again. And again. And a-fucking-gain. Usually airflow isn’t a problem for Karkat when he’s got a panful of complaints, but he hardly snips at you during the entire ordeal. No complaints when you switch the routine to burpees, and especially not when you crack a joke about the name. There isn’t even a single remark about your intelligence or incredibly fly humor, just, “Okay.” “Fine.” “Can we just get this over with?”

This is officially getting eerie. If he wants to do the weird lie-low-and-cover routine for approximately the first time in his life, good on him, but it isn’t doing a damn thing for your peace of mind.

By the time you get to cool-down by the playground, you can’t take it anymore and fall back on generic conversation starters, Small Talk for Strangers 101. How’s work, how’s play, you read the news this evening, well how about that. You’re fine with water cooler bullshit, as long as it will get him to say _something._

‘Something’ turns out to be that his sink is leaking, someone’s been raiding the communal fridge, and that you probably don’t want to be picking up zukes from Kroger’s anytime soon. Good to know. You reach for your feet and hook your fingers around the sides of your sneaks, keep your back straight as a bright familiar twinge pulls up the backs of your thighs. He’s going into a bridge, oh shit, you need to hassle him about that lumbar crunch thing he’s doing, it’s no good for his back, but you should probably save it for another night. You straighten up, pull your feet in and tuck them together as you wait for him to come out of it.

“How about movies? Anything good?”

He’s stretching out his hamstrings now, or whatever alien name he wants to give them. ‘Super-important locomotive fiber noodles’ or whatever. “Actually, there’s been a remake of one of your paltry human cinematic offerings. Not that there are any new ideas, mind you, but the introduction of your quaint concupiscent rituals does offer some variation.”

Con… cu… pissen- Oh no. If he starts talking about quadrants, you’re going to leave. “Flick sounds like a doozy. Title?”

“In Which a Young Troll, Having Planned Twenty-Seven Coupling Rituals for the Requisite Amounts of Nominal Friends, Harbors Flushed Intentions Towards Her Oblivious Employer-“

You’ve heard of this one. You might actually remember writing a blog entry about this one, when you were younger and dumber and way into masochism, in the ‘endless screaming nightmares’ kind of way. “Wait, are you actually talking about Twenty-Seven Dresses? Is that a thing that is happening right now?”

“No, just fucking listen for a moment, okay, I didn’t finish-

“No no, it’s okay, I heard you the first time. Twenty-Seven Dresses. James Marsden. That other chick, Katherine something or other. Heckle.”

“Heigl!”

“Haymaker. Whatever. Pretend there were a couple ‘troll hyphen’s in there. Troll-Katherine Haymaker, you know what I mean, sad star in possibly the worst decision of her career. Definitely Twenty-Seven Dresses.”

“Well, if you _insist_ on perverting the title of a poignant cinematic masterpiece-“

You laugh at him, one quick derisive huff. “That movie sucks. Were you listening to me at all?”

He’s sitting up now, probably glaring fit to kill, but the goggle really mess with the effect. You don’t point this out. “Do not start with me, Strider. I am in no mood to deal with your bullshit this evening, so don’t you even start.”

“Look, if you’re going to bring up a movie with James Marsden’s intensely punchable face in it, someone’s gotta stand up and say what’s what. Dude couldn’t act his way out of a speeding ticket if his car were on fire and his wife was having a baby in the back seat. And let’s not even mention that ass-to-front backwards excuse for a plot-”

That’s how you find out that while Karkat does not have a mean right hook, he does have a heaping fuck-ton of bottled rage, highly carbonated and at a near-constant bursting point. He lunges at you in a surge of haphazard fists and bad insults, and gets you once on the nose by sheer virtue of surprise.

Then you’re sitting on his back, one hand pinning his wrist between his shoulderblades, other wiping blood off your face. He tries to get his free hand around to swipe at you. When he realizes how completely impossible that is, he gives up and starts trying to push himself up with it instead, trying to get you to tip over. Good luck to him, he’s got piss-poor leverage and a sudden surprising disinclination to play dirty. You dig your heels in and push back.

“Damn, Karkles, anger management. Didn’t realize what a flush-crush you had on that poor God-given blight to cinema.” He starts to say something; you readjust your weight and he squawks. “Breathe, Vantas. Slowly now, don’t hurt yourself.”

This comes out somewhat stuffy on your part, as you’re currently snuffling back blood, pinching your nostrils shut as you tuck your chin forward and take shallow little mouthfuls of air. You’ve had worse. When he quits with the squirming, you glance down at him.

“Done?”

“Fuck you.”

“’kay. Wanna watch?”

“Oh my god, fuck you, Strider, fuck you in the least arousing and most disgustingly human-specific orifice you can think of.”

“This is getting a little kinky. I dunno, Karkat, I might have to start charging extra.”

“I _detest_ you.”

What a charmer. “That’s cool, as long as you can keep from punching me again. We good?”

“Fine.”

You let go of his arm and hop the mini-barrier to the swingset, take a moment to get real interested in the patterning of the woodchips. You keep pinching. As he’s getting up, you start doing a loop around, wiping what blood you can reach off your upper lip.

When you head towards him again, he’s staring at you and you still can’t breathe through your nose. You rub your hand off on your shirt, keep pinching.

“Yeah, okay, you got lucky that time. There’re some shops like, right across the street, so I’m gonna go get some napkins.”

“I can-”

“Nah, I need water to wash this off anyway.”

“-go with you.”

You’re shaking your head. “Just hang out here for a little, okay? I’m gonna sound like an asshole, but most shit around this area’s human-run, they might freak.”

They still freak. Probably something to do with some kid dribbling blood down his shirt sliding in at the worst time of night, asking where a sink and maybe a couple napkins are. The first one says they don’t have a bathroom, and when the barista at the troll café doesn’t answer, you turn around and keep looking. 

When you get back to the park, you have a small container of fries and a few extra napkins. He’s sitting on one of the swings, and would you believe it, starts to get up when you get close.

“Cut that out.” You sit on the swing next to his, hold out the container. “Fry?”

He hesitates, then settles back with a squeak of chains. Doesn’t reach for fries until you rattle the bag at him, though. “What is it with you and extraneous snack foods?”

“Don’t worry, next week’s your turn. White truffles and caviar, please, champs need to snack in style.”

That gets you a snort and a “Dream on!” Oh good, he got it. Not exactly like a thing of fries or a granola bar or whatever is breaking the bank, and you’re usually starved by the end of session; he must be, too.

He crams three in his mouth. You take a handful and pass the rest over to him.

“No, it’s fine-“

“Just take the fucking fries already.” If you’re being honest, you prefer the joint two blocks from the apartment. Also, you forgot to grab some ketchup. Oh well.

He pinches a corner of the bag and lifts it out of your hand, sets it in his lap with a glance like he’s doing you a favor. Hard to tell with those lenses, though. You guess it serves you right.

“Thanks.”

“Sure.”

You pick out another fry, have two left by the time Karkat finishes off the rest. You pop them in your mouth as he goes to throw away the container. Okay, session’s over, time to head out. You get up, wipe your hands on your jeans as he comes back over to the swingset. Shake hands, bump chests, ‘Good game, bro,’ everyone leaves happy. You both stop a few feet away from each other, and he glances at you, then breaks gaze, sort of inspects his sneakers for loose laces or something. So much for everyone leaving happy. You thought you’d cleaned up pretty well, too; maybe it started bleeding again.

“What, does it look that bad?”

“Your shitty human blood color is what looks bad, Strider. I might just vomit from sheer disgust.”

Ah, there it is. Still pretty half-hearted, but nowhere near as weak-sauce as before. You forgive him, you guess, and shrug, sniff lightly to see how your nose is doing. Blugh. “I know you’re jealous and all, but don’t knock on the red, dude.”

“Me? Jealous of that radioactive wastewater slushing through your veins? You’re presuming an awful lot here!”

“Better than bleeding every shade of the clearance rack in the ugly paint department.”

“We clearly have wildly differing definitions of a very basic word! Yours is wrong, by the way.”

“Yo, Karkat, your on-again off-again relationship with Merriam-Webster is showing. Will you stay or will you go? And who gets to take the wigglers? Educated minds want to know.”

“What?”

“You know, Merriam-Webster. Some dumbasses who just wrote the dictionary, not really important.”

“No, I’m just wondering why you’re pronouncing Merrim-Wester like a fucking imbecile.”

“Cute. Maybe I have a speech impediment, you ever think about that? I’m offended, Karkat.”

“Nice try. Don’t get me wrong, you’re clearly frond-to-pan swapwards, but a pronunciation dysfunction is one of the few abnormalities not present in your sorry grab-bag of an existence.“ 

That was also pretty bad, but at least he’s working his way back up to the usual caliente, handle with care.

He clears his throat. “Sorry, though.”

“My god, did you just apologize? Hang on, can you say that again when I’m recording?”

“Oh fuck you! Here I am, trying to offer my extreme regret and condolences and make _nice,_ and you’re just throwing it back in my face. But holy shit, look at what I’m doing, I’m just going to nod and fucking keep prostrating myself, because I am making an actual effort to be contrite here, you asshole!”

“Try harder. Not that I care.” You don’t. Especially not about something like a bloody nose; that’s nothing new. You might admit to mild annoyance, at best, but this shit seriously needs to end now. “This just seems sort of important to you, on a weirdly personal level.”

“It is not!”

“Dude, okay. Whatever.”

“I’m _sorry._ I am laying my bloodpusher bare here, delicately settling it right on the ground for all – mostly you – to see. Do you want me to _describe_ it, if you’re having trouble with your douchey fucking ocular light-blocking devices?”

“You do what you want, but check it out: I don’t give a shit. Are you done yet or what?”

“I don’t know, you tell me!”

“Jesus Christ, I don’t care, let’s just _drop it already.”_ Oops, emphasis wasn’t the best choice. He’s got twitches of half-started motions working through his shoulders; you stack on another set of refused apologies and you’re pretty certain he is going to start wringing his hands like someone’s dear old auntie. You’re already embarrassed for him.

“Isn’t there some sort of human custom to make amends, probably needlessly complicated and nauseating in its sincerity? Do we… fist-bump? Is that one?”

Okay, keep the volume down, can’t wake the neighbors because some dumb shit doesn’t know when to just let something go. Your shades come up a little as you pinch the bridge of your nose for like two fucking seconds, you will allow this breach in your incredible composure just this once. You take a deep breath, then tap the frames back into place.

“No you gigantic tool, the fuck do you know about ancient human traditions lovingly handed down from great-grandpappy lusus to spawn, _obviously_ you need to kiss it better.”

At some point, you’re going to have to learn that particular scrunched-up, thoughtful look is bad news. Probably you’ll figure it out as soon as he lets go of your face, but right now you’re kinda busy trying to push him back, and he’s really busy getting up in your personal space. You step on his feet. He misses. Holy fuck, he misses your nose by a longshot.

Instead his lips touch down to the side of your mouth, just an absurdly light brush, god damn it, he was serious about it, he was so fucking serious about the entire goddamn thing, there is something _wrong_ with this guy. Unfortunately, that makes it really hard to not grab two handfuls of his shirt and reel him in, like goddamn near impossible. So impossible that you’ve abandoned all hope at acting like an actual sentient life form, sound the alarms, tell all passengers to get the fuck in the lifeboats, you’ll never let go, Jack. You’ll also probably really, _really_ regret this later, but for the moment, kissing Karkat is actually pretty fucking rad.

It would be radder if he would quit chewing on your lower lip and doing the awful spitty exhale thing. You’re going to tell him that once he eases off a little, maybe when he pauses for breath because how the fuck is he even keeping that up, Christ almighty. When he pulls back, though, hands clamped hard over your shoulders, your better cognitive functions are still doing the loop-de-loop, because what comes out instead is, “You know I was joking, right?”

Bad. Move. Something twists up in his face, and he doesn’t even jump straight to Shouty McBlast-Your-Face-Off-with-My-Venomous-Bilespew-of-Rage mode. Instead, he just rattles out this harsh low demand, a snarl of _“What_ the fuck did you just say,” and well, you stepped in it this time, Strider.

Your mouth moves on autopilot. “Did I fucking stutter? I was _kidding,_ you know as in the thing that’s not for real-“

“I am pleased to announce that you _officially_ have the worst sense of humor of any semi-sentient being I’ve ever had the displeasure of personally encountering. Which, I’ll have you know, is quite the fucking accomplishment, given how many of those I encounter on a day-to-day basis.”

You slap his hand away when he moves to jab your shoulder, trying to make his point or whatever it is stupid overdramatic fuckers do in phony-ass reinterpretations of how shit actually works, shoot back, “Oh yeah? Didn’t realize mirrors were part of the produce aisle,” and that just sets him off more.

Fuck, but he gets touchy when he’s pissed. You start backing up, there’s a fucking win-win situation for both of you in here somewhere, or at least something that doesn’t end up being a complete goddamn loss on both sides. You might be able to let him get a grapple in or something, and oh _fuck,_ he actually got through, eyes on the ball, you dumb shit.

But he’s grabbing your shirt and not you, _is he fucking serious?_ Best that’s going to do is fuck up the neckline, he’s been watching too many movies. Christ, what the shit, is he trying to throw you? If it’s payback, okay, but he has about the shittiest grasp on the concept of torque that you’ve ever seen, and there is no way you’re getting chumped over with that sad display. You wrap your hands around his wrists and shift just the wrong way as he readjusts, godDAMMIT.

You both end up in a confused tangle on the ground, pushing at each other, trying to kick the other person off, and you’re so done with this, so done with him. “For fuck’s sake, that’s not what I meant! I was like, kidding about laying a tender smackaroo on the boo-boo, how do you even _believe_ that shit, just how _high_ do you even have to be.”

He flips. Like, table-tossing, floor-pounding hulks the fuck out, seems to have an entire Powerpoint all ready about your failings as a thinking individual, what it means that he has to take the time out of his incredibly important schedule to give you the lowdown. Your ears are ringing just from proximity, god.

He’s so fucking obnoxious! You didn’t mean it like that, what kind of fucking awful shitwad does he think you are, like you’d just set a guy up for a laugh. Fuck’s sake, he’s the one who went in for it anyway, and he’s the one who missed, that is not your goddamn responsibility.

And here he comes, cruising in again for round two, well fuck this, fuck him, _he is so fucked up._ Probably you are, too, because you’re pulling him closer. You’ve got a thousand small stupid grievances piled up somewhere in your chest, and the tire-heap has just fucking ignited. He started this and you’re making sure he gets singed, and that’s just for starters. You pull him in and quit with the dainty little pecks, try to make sure he knows you are damn _well **serious**_ about this -serious about him being a dumb shit!-, and count down seconds until he shoves you away, snarls some word-packed version of ‘Quit it!’ but no. Nope. Got three rounds of ten tallied away already, and the only conclusion you can really draw is that he’s totally, definitely, lip-chompingly into this. Okay. You’re down.

You have him by the back of his neck, and he’s got a serious hold on your shoulders. Once you grab for his hips, though, his hands come up and he curls his claws into your hair instead, nicks up your scalp a little but you hardly give a shit. You’ve got two fingers hooked into one of his belt loops and a solid handful of his ass. He gasps when you squeeze, bites your lip _way_ harder than strictly necessary and fine, if he wants to make this a givesy-takesy retribution game, then you’re gonna get him to say ‘uncle’ first.

It helps that sucking face is something Vantas has more enthusiasm in than technique. That’s great, you can work with that, but it means you have to focus a little more on navigating those goddamn teeth than you’d like. At some point, you’re gonna have to mention that inadvertent slobber is not sexy, but right now, his hands going up the front of your shirt is more important.

They fist up when you curl your tongue against the roof of his mouth, and he makes a noise at the back of his throat, part moan, part tiny little ‘click,’ like if a camera shutter had an awkward angry fling with a cricket. You don’t realize you’ve pulled back slightly until he does the same, hands freezing against your chest.

Shit, you didn’t mean to do that. Probably you should apologize, or at least explain that it was sort of weird but not really a turn-off, but god, he would throw it right back in your face, wouldn’t he. Ugh. You can at least try, though. Maybe you can figure out a diplomatic way to say ‘get the fuck back here and put your tongue in my mouth’ while you’re at it.

“Hey, uh-“

He’s yanking his hands back like you just flashed an enforceradicator badge and told him to stick’em up, stands up and starts backing off in the same motion. “I have to go.”

You get up, and he takes another step away, like, what does he think, that you’re gonna come after him. “Wait, hang on a sec-“

“No, there isn’t a ‘hang on a sec,’ you dumb shit, some incredibly pressing matters have just come up, my unique qualifications are needed to deal with them, and I don’t have the time to waste by explaining the situation to you in small words so your prehistorically backwards brain can even have a chance at understanding, I’ve gotta leave.”

He’s talking so fast, shit, it’s like a switch just flipped in that fucking mess of polysyllables and pent-up aggression he calls a brain. Awkward contrition to hostility to lip-flapping anxiety cover-up in the space of five minutes. Wow, this awful dipshit’s an emotional fucking rollercoaster; you only have some intention of getting off.

You have to try and unscramble your fucking ‘Neanderthal’ brain first, though. Oh would you look at that, he’s got his fucking phone out. “Okay, fine. You do what you gotta do, but hey, you know I can see your screen’s reflection, right? In both your lenses?”

He flinches and shuts off the screen, but doesn’t put it back in his pocket. You cannot _believe_ he thought pulling out his phone would add any credibility to his story. At the very least, switch over to something other than homescreen, for fuck’s sake.

“Don’t look at my screen, you snooping fuckwit!”

“How else was I supposed to check the time? You ever think about that, Karkat? Maybe it’s about _my_ needs. I want a divorce.”

Was that guilt right there? You might have imagined it, though; wasn’t even there a second. “Oh my god, goodnight, you relentless fucking nutjob! I’m heading home.”

You bite back a _‘finally’_ just in time. “Yeah, sure. You gotta go, you gotta go. You know, there’s a troll-joint like a block and a half down. You can probably use their bathroom.”

“Fuck off!” He’s already walking away, doesn’t even wave. When he passes the trash can, he breaks into a jog.

“Germaphobe? Yeah, I get that.” Too late. He’s already too far away to hear, nevermind respond.

When he’s gone, you take your shades off and rub your hands over your face. God. The hell was that even supposed to be. You’ve got maybe three guesses, and they’re all stupid because they all involve that bizarro quadrangle bullshit. Not your thing. Either like someone or don’t; no need to get all fancy about it.

Trolls sure are fucking weird.

TRY TO BE A LITTLE MORE MULTICULTURAL

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -[Telegraph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphing_%28sports%29)  
> -[Aerial twist](http://www.club540.com/trick/aerial-twist)  
> -[Swingthrough](http://www.club540.com/trick/swingthru)  
> -[List of vaults and brief descriptions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_%28parkour%29)  
> -[Burpee](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burpee_%28exercise%29)  
> -QM – quadrupedal motion
> 
> I am also going to take a moment to pimp the [parkourstuck](http://tumblr.com/tagged/parkourstuck) tag on Tumblr, there is a lot of cool stuff there.
> 
> Thanks to [wingarea](http://wingarea.tumblr.com) for beta-ing!
> 
> And also a thanks to everyone who is sticking with this story! Y'all are super-great : >
> 
> *EDIT*
> 
> To answer the occasional 'Will this ever be finished?': Short answer, yes. Long answer, [here](http://canalsobemoe.tumblr.com/post/84233897091/re-off-the-handle-a-k-a-that-davekat-fic-where)! : >


	4. THE END

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Off the Handle has officially become an abandoned work. Thank you all so so much for reading, and here's every piece of unreleased material and a great deal of thank yous.
> 
> Crossposted from [my tumblr](http://canalsobemoe.tumblr.com/post/154849444091/parkourstuck-is-over)

I am finally clawing the ratty ol’ towel from my gnarled wizened grasp(probably through some alt-universe clone shit because otherwise, I have no idea that would work) and finally admitting that I’m not gonna finish [Off the Handle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419864/chapters/699712), aka that one Davekat/parkour fic from like what, 2013? I’m just a different person with different priorities and different characterizations now, and I can’t get back into the right headspace to finish it up.

Thanks so much again to @roachpatrol who really graciously let me use one of her prompts for this (and who I can’t @ properly for some reason??? huh); this gave me a LOT of joy to write at a time when I was starting to feel kinda down, and I’m still really glad to have written it. thanks so much also to @8bitbear, @aurorean, @mustachioedoctopus, @desolatesandwich, @rabbitsteaparty who let me scream at them about this and encouraged me and previewed and edited and _drew me things, my god_ , I am honestly truly blessed with the friends I have what the heck u guys, what the fuck.

Thanks too to everyone who read, shared, kudos’d, commented, drew yet more things, anything. I’m still so grateful and so happy to have been able to do this much and have people not only read it but actively ask for more??? Shucks, guys. 

As promised, though, I am releasing all the drafts I had for the upcoming chapters, all my planning notes, all the cut bits, and a couple smutty drabbles I was writing on the side, plus the vaguest plans for a sweeping political drama sequel i wanted to write after ‘Off the Handle’ wrapped up. They’re all in Googledocs, y’all can look at them, share them, whatever, but obviously editing is locked. Please note that most of the writing is from like. 2013. 

**[Chapter 4, draft 1](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e2lzgX6NRi1A5c3YAP6S0rZG7gTNLFIa3baGSk5dWwo/edit?usp=sharing) ** \- decided against this one for pacing reasons

[**Chapter 4, draft 2**](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a3mxzOrPU20q1BQBgyFqRRM1D6-DFLLNPWryr5eA2eA/edit?usp=docslist_api)\- was going to go with this one

[**Overall draft for the entire fic**](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11r9HlHJ2tLUu4-Y1GXj0spLI3OF6FONLqaCqySbGz4g/edit?usp=sharing) \- the draft for what used to be Chapter 4 (now 5) is the one with the big blood color reveal, and is honestly mostly done, and I actually really enjoy it, so I encourage you to read it. Some other cut bits and notes are at the very end of the document

[**Smut 1 - literal fucking machinery**](https://docs.google.com/document/d/19lbpKQW2RlnmG3NTmWjvDWW91ndiSpgQMadjPoLNGuY/edit?usp=sharing) \- toy play goes wrong and they stop immediately? unfinished

[**Smut 2 - Peter the Fucking Terrible**](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q32pCb-AacIwtb-LlBDQylN_8v5B2MQ5lOvw6Uz9cw8/edit?usp=sharing). Dave names Karkat’s tentadick. They fuck, then snuggle and snark, and Dave goes to find a snack.

**[Smut 3 - Bonercity](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i7X-IS9Mw1KCPTLjNSzZVL1Pg_pEFHyox2LW9cP_xHc/edit?usp=sharing) ** \- Probably the smuttiest. The sex is done. The fic isn’t necessarily, but it’s gonna stay that way.

**[Fluff - Excessively Proteinized Oatbars](https://docs.google.com/document/d/178bw7hQt0MRAus60CJs97VeMvV_FEWzIOrJvtAu8Q-A/edit?usp=sharing) ** \-  Dave returns from work exhausted and probably really hungry but refuses to do anything about it. Karkat contemplates cramming granola bars in his bag.

**[More cut bits and notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xB_lWHSEKWr_cz6V-mr2IJAyOo78oEzt2PL52svAC6E/edit?usp=sharing) ** \- there’s kind of a cute one-shot involving string cheese that I didn’t bother separating into a separate thing? Also just phrases and ideas that sounded nice, brief mention of John’s shitty tricking name (actually ‘Airtyme’ in this universe), mention of the industrial uses of dead grubs, and some spicy sentences in like the sexy way. Just a grab-bag of bits.

[**Sweeping Political Plans for the sequel**](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xLrxJ5J1Ws0koDMBAMPInZ_QxUDEdkATedqWM19gRt8/edit?usp=sharing) - mostly involves the cult of the Sufferer, Terezi, and also Dave getting shot. It was all in my head and I typed up a summary just for you. Also so I could remember like 10 years from now, lmao. Maybe I _will_  want to write a sweeping space political drama later, who knows! Mostly that summary, some relationship squabbles, and a few drabble paragraphs about dealing with grief after death of a loved one.

As always, I’m so so so flattered and frankly astounded that a bunch of people were interested in this lil project. If anyone needs any reference for their own parkour-related shenanigans, I PERSONALLY think my [**parkour tag**](http://canalsobemoe.tumblr.com/tagged/parkour) is pretty good, but I am biased. Please also feel free to message or ask me; I still fuckin love parkour, even if I’m much more removed from practicing it now.

Thank you all so much again! This has been a sweet trip, and I’m really glad to have taken it with all of you. Stay hydrated :>


End file.
